


Red Oni, Blue Oni

by Tabi_essentially



Series: Wartime verse [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Bloodplay, Clowns, Creepy, Dark, Dreams, M/M, Phobias, Trust, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-17
Updated: 2012-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabi_essentially/pseuds/Tabi_essentially
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We dream because we have to. Arthur can't dream like a normal person anymore, and the Id starts to surface while he's awake. He goes to Yusuf for help, to shake the "lucid" out of his dreams. Eames shows up with some ideas of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [ a prompt on the kink meme. ](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/13659.html?thread=31514971#t31514971) in which Arthur and Eames go under together, not lucid dreaming, and have dark subconscious times together. Quite dark indeed. A little tweaking and I used it to mini-fill [hysterical Arthur under sedation prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/13659.html?thread=31774043#t31774043) as well.

** ** ** **

Eames delivered. When his associates needed something―and they returned favors―he went out of his way to make everything smooth for all parties involved. He thought around every corner when he could, so that people didn't have to ask him for more. It was what made him the best. People thought it was some sort of natural skill, the forging, but it wasn't. He'd worked at it. It was harder in dreams, where he was forging people, and easier topside, forging documents. But he was still the best, because he took the time to do it right.

And because he had standards. He didn't do shit like this for everyone, and he tried to keep it at least on the moral side of illegal. Unless, of course, it really, _really_ benefited him to be immoral.

Morality was a shade of grey anyway, and grey was where he usually liked to stay. Grey like the slate of the sky of his homeland, where he was currently delivering the goods to one of his associates who had taken up long-term temporary residence here.

Yusuf answered the door of the anonymous, two-level building with the long halls and many rooms. He was in his lab coat, looking flustered, perhaps unnaturally so.

"Come in, come in," he said, shuffling aside to let Eames pass.

"I've got your slips," Eames said.

"Good, good. Please set them on the table. Thank you."

Yes, something was definitely off here. Eames tucked the stack of papers back into his coat. No, he was certainly not going to leave a stack of brilliantly forged prescriptions on the table where anyone could grab them. Yusuf was as legitimate as it got in the underground dream-world, but his occasionally ground-breaking ways were nowhere near legal, and Eames had taken great care with the prescriptions for those various chemicals.

"I wish I had more time," Yusuf said, "but you see, I've gotten into the middle of something here today that requires most of my attention."

"Anything I can help with?" Eames asked, because for one thing, he did like to help (it was good to have Yusuf in his corner, just in case,) but more because he was curious now.

Yusuf was about to tell him no, and probably shoo him out the door, but then he thought better of it. Eames watched him war with the decision.

"Share," he urged.

"I really can't. It violates the doctor-patient code of trust. It wouldn't be ethical."

Something chilly coiled in Eames's gut as he read the trepidation in Yusuf's eyes. Yusuf wanted to tell him. Was burning to, really.

"I understand," Eames said. "Hey, call me if you need my help, all right?" He took the documents out and tossed them onto the table.

"Yes, all right," Yusuf said.

Eames turned to leave, but he was waiting for it – waiting to be called back. 

"Actually," Yusuf said, "I wonder if it does concern you. It actually might. I could ask you a few questions, if that's all right. Perhaps that might help me come to a conclusion about this case. Which, I fear, is less unusual that I had once thought."

"Sure," Eames said. "Ask away."

Yusuf didn't invite him to sit, as if he was ready to get up and run at any moment. He took his glasses off and looked thoughtful. "It hasn't happened to me," he said, "but then, I never went under that much. Perhaps this is why."

"What never happened to you?" Eames asked.

"The loss of ability to properly dream."

That was it? A common complaint in the dream-world. Cobb suffered from it almost constantly. "Sure," Eames said. "There are times, months sometimes, when I can't dream without the PASIV. You know the answer to that. You wean yourself off of it and pretty soon you start dreaming on your own again."

Yusuf smiled vaguely, in the way he had that said, ' _I know more than you do about this, but of course that's to be expected.'_ "That's not what I said, Eames. I said the ability to _properly_ dream. Have you lost that?"

"Clarify," Eames said, intrigued.

Yusuf began his scholarly pacing, shaking his glasses for emphasis, and Eames wondered again if he wouldn't make a better professor than underground dreaming doctor and chemist. "We dream because it's our mind's way of letting go. Oh, there are many theories as to why we dream, but in essence, we must do it because we must let go of reality for a certain amount of time. Otherwise reality lets go of us. That's what I have begun to think. I believe that dreams are psychotherapy. They keep us from fragmenting in the waking life. Recent events have begun to support this. Freud said that all dreams, even the worst of them, involving punishment and pain, were a form of wish-fulfillment."

"Freud was a Victorian coke-fiend who thought that everyone in the world was afraid of sex and therefore dreamed of stairs instead," Eames said. He thought, fondly, or Arthur's endless steps and how Freud would interpret them as unending sexual frustration. " _What_ recent events?"

Yusuf ignored him and went on. "Jung supported some of these theories. Eames, if it is true that we dream in order to let go of ourselves for a few hours every day, because it is necessary, then what becomes of our minds if we lose the ability to let go? I'm not talking about dreaming. I'm talking about the difference between normal dreaming and _lucid_ dreaming. Are all your dreams lucid?"

"Most, sure. Sometimes when I haven't worked in a while they revert back to normal."

"Define normal?" Yusuf said.

"You know. Showing up naked to school, fears exposed, emotions heightened, hurting the ones you love, being hurt by them, fucking your enemies. Crazy things one can't control in one's dreams."

"That's the key," Yusuf said. "The lack of control. I think it's necessary. What happens when you can't let go of the lucidity? Of the control?"

There was that chilly, coiled feeling again. "You'd...what? Snap in reality?"

Yusuf looked at him solemnly. "One of your colleagues has come to see me."

Before Eames could get down to really worrying, a ragged shout tore out of a room from down the hall. Yusuf started off in the direction, but not before Eames caught the look of panic on his face, the look of _Oh shit, I was supposed to be in there with him._ The shout was followed by the sound of something big, metallic and heavy hitting a floor or a wall.

But it was really the voice that made Eames go racing down the hall, shoving Yusuf out of the way. He'd heard it enough before. Heard him get killed enough in dreams, during their careers. 

He'd recognize Arthur's voice anywhere.

** ** ** **

It started insidiously, the way all worrisome situations tend to start: with a small sign that only vaguely hinted of panic. You think about it once, in the dark, and you forget it when you go about your business: Tail the mark. Tally his receipts. Hack into his computer. Put a frozen pizza in the oven, surf the internet, eat, take a shower, finish paperwork, prepare for tomorrow.

But that niggling doubt, that worry, is waiting for you at the end of the day, reminding you of itself, a whisper in the dark. 

It started when Arthur tripped going up the stairs, landed really hard on his outstretched hand, scattered all his papers and sprained his wrist. A stupid little accident that people made every day. Nothing to really worry about.

Except that in the back of his mind, Arthur knew that he hadn't just tripped. He'd actually seen something that had gotten his attention, and for a fraction of a second he'd felt a sharp, pulling vertigo. 

_Well maybe I'm working too hard it wouldn't be the first time I've run myself into the ground that one embarrassing time fainting during the meeting that wasn't a brain tumor idiot it's just overwork nothing to worry about it's nothing to worry about..._

Except he'd seen a _fish_ hovering in the stairwell. Just for a second. Just hovering there as if suspended in water, its lips round and sucking, its gills flaring. And then he'd seen it actually turn and swim away. The vertigo had hit and _bam_ , he'd almost faceplanted on the stairs. Papers everywhere.

If that hadn't been a hallucination, he didn't know what was. He'd checked his totem, and then checked it again. And again, and again, throughout that first day.

There had been no more incidents during the rest of the week, and the week after that. The job went well (not Cobb this time, who was semi-retired. Ariadne was back in school, Eames was who-knew-where.) And he'd forgotten the incident in the way that Arthur forgot everything he deemed mostly unimportant, which was that he didn't entirely forget it. He just filed it away for later perusal, should the need arise.

Two weeks later, the need did arise. As he walked home in the rain, stars, and not water, started falling on his head and on his coat. Just for a second, but enough to make him start to sweat under his winter coat.

It was useless by then to pretend not to worry, and so he had called Cobb.

He could hear the kids in the background, and he felt bad for interrupting him. But Cobb had been the best for a reason. He knew his way around the mind. He'd studied dreaming with his entire passionate being.

"It's not _common_ ," Cobb had told him. "But we did hear about it. Yeah, it's possible. You start dreaming when you're awake, because your mind can't handle being in your conscious control all the time. Your unconscious mind starts hitching a ride when you're awake."

"So what do I do?" Arthur had asked, so infinitely relieved that he felt his shoulders drop and his breath escape him. Not common, but Cobb had heard of it. And he sounded pretty casual about it, too.

"Just stop lucid dreaming for a while. Stop going under with the PASIV and eventually your brain gives up lucidity. You give up that control and your normal dreams come back with all their craziness, shame, horror, pleasure and what-have-you."

A little bit of fear curled inside of his mind, then. "What, just... stop lucid dreaming?" _How?_ he wanted to ask. _How do you just stop?_

"Yeah," Cobb said. "Just let go of control when you go to sleep. It gets easier when you haven't used the PASIV in a while, trust me."

"I see," Arthur had said. "Well, I'll give that a try. Thanks, Cobb. I don't want to keep you if you're busy. Sorry to bother you."

"Arthur, you can bother me any time, you know that. I wish you'd bother me more. Come visit, okay? And call me if you keep having trouble. It's okay to ask for help."

"Sure thing," Arthur had said. "Thanks again."

He'd ended the call, feeling a little shaky. 

The PASIV wasn't his problem. He hadn't even gone under for the last job, playing the true point man and staying topside to make sure it all went smoothly. That was the thing: Arthur hadn't used the PASIV in months. His normal dreams were all lucid. Since working in dreams, he'd never known them not to be.

After a few days more of walking around awake, feeling hijacked by sudden unrealities, Arthur thought that maybe it had to do with the chemistry in his brain. He decided to make a different call.

The next week found him in Yusuf's private lab, a willing test subject to experimental dream-chemicals and compounds.

** ** ** **

Arthur had flipped the metal stand next to the bed and had dragged the PASIV―still attached to his wrist―to the other side of the room before it ripped out of him and sprayed blood across the wall.

He turned quick, like a lizard, Eames thought. His eyes were huge, wrathful, unseeing. He was still halfway asleep or in some sort of waking limbo. Panic tugged at Eames's heart; he resisted it. Arthur was a juggernaut when enraged; he could kill in seconds and everything counted as a potential weapon.

This Arthur proved when he grabbed hold of an IV stand and swung it. Eames and Yusuf both ducked. The stand hit a bedside lamp and sent it scattering in shards across the floor.

Eames grabbed him from behind and Arthur kicked both legs out, planted his feet against the wall and shoved them both backwards. Eames had no illusions about Arthur's physical strength – he was rangy but made up for slenderness in speed, agility and ropy muscle. He'd grappled with Arthur enough to expect to be thrown back, and had watched him fight with deadly intent often enough to know what was next: the back of Arthur's skull into his nose. Before it could happen, he pressed his palm over Arthur's forehead and drew him backwards against his shoulder, keeping the other arm around his waist.

"You're awake," he said in his ear, calm and steady. "You're all right, Arthur. It's all right."

Arthur did not believe him, clearly. He kicked and writhed, tried to get his leg behind Eames's to sweep him.

Yusuf came forward and grabbed Arthur's leg, wrenched his khaki pants down a few centimetres, and jammed a needle into his hip. Normally Eames would have fought the idea of drugging him even more than he already was, but this was far past necessary. Arthur fought the entire way down, only slightly less deadly.

Yusuf grabbed Arthur's wrist, pressing a gauze pad to stop the bleeding while Eames lifted him awkwardly. He carried him to the bed, boots crunching over broken glass. He set him down on the bed and rolled him onto his side. Then he sat down beside him and allowed the shaky sigh to escape. _Fuck,_ Arthur was scary, and Eames had never seen that rage turned on him before.

"How long till he wakes up," Eames asked, "and will we be fearing for our lives again when he does?"

"A minute at the most," Yusuf said. He pressed the gauze harder and grabbed another one from the floor where Arthur had sent everything flying. Not sterile, but the only thing in reach. "That shouldn't even have knocked him out. It was to counteract what he had before. But factoring in exhaustion..."

Arthur stirred only briefly before his eyes opened. Eames tensed, but Arthur made no move other than to shift his gaze around the room, calm. He breathed deeply in through his nose as he considered his surroundings. 

"I'm all right," he said.

"Your totem," Eames said, soft and low, still ready to move. Arthur was a tricky bastard. "Still in your pocket?" He kept his hand on Arthur's shoulder, ready to shove him down again if he had to.

Arthur nodded into the pillow.

"Get it. Go on."

With his free hand, the one that Yusuf wasn't gripping by the wrist, he fished around in his pocket until he felt the loaded die. He nodded. "I'm all right. You can let go."

Eames did, slowly, still on guard. Arthur pulled his wrist away from Yusuf, and braced on his arm to sit up. Eames felt pretty shaky himself. He put on his blankest face and took a few minutes to think this over. 

Yusuf shined a penlight into Arthur's eyes, first one and then the other, and then put Arthur's own hand over his wrist. "Hold onto that. I'm going to get some bandages and some water. All right?" He looked at Eames. "If you need anything, shout."

"I certainly will." Unhinged Arthur was a frightening thing. Not as spectacularly terrifying as Mal had been, but still intimidating.

"How long have you been here?" Eames asked, when Yusuf left the room.

Arthur didn't look at him. His skin looked like smudged rice paper. "Three days. You?" 

"Me? I just came to drop off some papers."

"Oh."

"How long have you had the nightmares?" Eames asked.

Arthur looked at him, his eyes suddenly hard and closed off. "That's not the problem."

"What is the problem?"

Before Arthur could answer, Yusuf returned with a glass of water, which he handed to Arthur, and some bandages. "This was not very successful," he said. He took Arthur's wrist and began cleaning and wrapping it.

"May I ask what kinds of experiments you're both doing here, and to what end?" Eames said. 

Yusuf looked to Arthur, awaiting his permission to disclose his business. Eames waited, too. He'd been dreaming with Arthur for years – Arthur was the best there was, and no mistake. They'd fought, they'd flirted, they'd fucked, and not necessarily in that order, but interspersed over the years. They'd saved each other's lives on at least two occasions. Eames loved him in some difficult way. He hadn't seen nor even heard from Arthur in the last ten months, but he felt that divulging this problem―of which Eames already had at least half of the story―shouldn't have been an issue at this point.

It apparently was, at least for Arthur. For all that they had seen of each other, this was new. This was too close to Mal.

Finally, Arthur looked too tired to fight it, and gave tacit consent with a sigh and a weary nod.

"I even used a mild sedative this time," Yusuf said, mostly to Arthur. "It did nothing to keep you under. But the rest of it, that worked?"

"I think so," Arthur said. "I don't remember, exactly."

Yusuf looked back at Eames. "The dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for alertness, decisions, things we rely on when we're awake. This part of the brain normally gives up when we dream. Arthur's does not. Today we were trying a compound that will shut this section of the brain down so that Arthur could dream normally."

"Is it a narcotic, a hallucinogen or something?" Eames asked.

Yusuf looked offended. "Mr. Eames, you're the one who brings me prescription papers. If you think I'm dealing in drugs then perhaps you ought not to bring them."

"Sorry," Eames huffed. "I don't know chemistry, for Christ sakes."

"It worked, I think," Arthur said, his voice raw and dry. "I don't remember what I dreamed, but I did dream."

"But perhaps it worked too well," Yusuf said. "Arthur, the prefrontal cortex, in schizophrenics, is often damaged or underdeveloped. Yours, I can only imagine, is highly developed. We all go a little mad, when we dream," he said, with a smile. "We're meant to."

"So Arthur is pathologically logical," Eames said. "Arthur, you've put the 'logical' back into 'pathological.' The dream police, apparently, they live inside of your head. And I always thought that was Cobb's song."

Arthur offered him a tired smile.

"So, we're filling Arthur full of drugs that would cause schizophrenia in a normal person and it's still not getting the job done?" Eames said.

Yusuf shrugged. "Not _filling_ him with them. But essentially, yes, that's what we're doing."

"It's the only thing I can do," Arthur said.

Eames turned to Yusuf. "Can we have a moment?" 

"Of course. Call me if you need anything."

He left, and Arthur regarded Eames warily.

"Now then," Eames said. "Tell me when the nightmares began, because you've shut them down for a reason."

Arthur pulled his legs up, crossed them, and sat back against the head of the bed. Eames looked him over while he waited, while Arthur deliberated with the truth he was about to reveal. The thing that Eames never asked about. He was wearing khaki pants and a grey button-down shirt. And socks, also grey. Everything combined to make him look washed out and colorless. 

"They started after high school," Arthur said. "Ridiculously. Relentlessly."

"Why?"

Arthur looked him in the eye, seeming to say, ' _You know why_ ,' but Eames really didn't. At least not all of it. The only thing he'd gotten from Arthur in the past was, ' _I saw some shit, okay? But it was no big deal._ '

"You don't have to tell me," Eames said. "At least not the details. I know you lost someone dear to you. I know you got involved with a bad crowd. I know you watched a man die before you graduated from high school."

"So?" Arthur said. "Millions of kids have it a shitload worse than I did."

"Perhaps," Eames said. "And they usually end up in therapy, getting help, which you never did. Which is not a judgment," Eames said, holding up his hand when he saw Arthur's narrowed eyes. "I should have had therapy too, and tons of it, perhaps. But we went into dreaming, instead. What happened after high school?"

Arthur thought for a moment. A long moment, really, as he seemed to concentrate on something that perhaps he had never considered before. He frowned, trying to work it out. "Maybe it was before I left school. I kind of had... I don't know if it would make any difference. I had a concussion, back then. It was pretty bad, they said. I left it untreated for about a week and when I got to the hospital I had pneumonia along with the head trauma."

"Did you have an accident?"

"No, I got my ass kicked. Thoroughly, I might add," he said with a small, wry smile. "And don't get me wrong, I could fight back then, too, but. Just, this one time. It got pretty bad. And then I went without sleep while I had this head injury, for a long time. In the hospital they gave me all these sedatives and I don't remember a lot of that. The rest of the whole year is kind of a blur."

"Have you told Yusuf?"

"I didn't think of it."

"Go on. And then?"

"And then I went to college and started having these dreams, waking up with blinding headaches. Migraines, they said. I had meds for migraines but it never went away. College was like a blur too. I maybe self-medicated sometimes, to stay awake. And to sleep without getting interrupted. It got pretty bad."

Eames felt a sudden wave of fondness for Arthur that was not entirely unexpected. He'd been down a similar road, probably around the same age. "And then?"

"And then Mal came along, and Cobb. They taught me how to control the dreams." He looked up at Eames then, in naked awe and love – but not for him. "She solved everything. I didn't need the pills. The migraines left. Nightmares..." He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "Gone. I could finish school, I could make my grades, I wasn't the crazy kid no one wanted to room with because he'd be screaming everyone awake at 3 AM. It was like I had my life back."

"You used the PASIV?" Eames asked, incredulous. "They taught you to use it when you were in college?"

"No," Arthur said, his voice distant. "They taught me how to lucid dream without it. I never needed it to build my own dreams, or to control them. Not since she taught me how."

"The PASIV isn't your problem."

"No."

"The dream police inside of your head are the problem."

Arthur rolled his eyes and made a weary, "get on with it," motion with his hand.

"Then maybe you don't need drugs or chemicals or anything, really, to undo what's been going on. You just need a really good dream criminal to get past the dream police."

Arthur frowned, thinking it over, trying to turn it around in his head. He was obviously too tired to make sense of things. "You're going to try to extract? Or incept me?"

"I won't have to, if my idea works," Eames said. "It goes like this. You and I go under together with the PASIV. Natural sleep, no compounds, no sedation..."

"Two reasons why that won't work," Arthur said, cutting him off like he always did. "One, even if you could somehow find a way to get me to dream like normal, I can't keep myself asleep, and _two_..."

"I've already figured out that first one, pigeon, but go on, keep enjoying the sound of your voice."

Arthur narrowed his eyes, indicating that he was on the verge of a dangerous strop. "And _two_..." He opened his mouth to continue, then closed it. He looked a little ashamed.

"You don't want anyone to see?" Eames said.

"It's not just that. It's not like I have some kind of terrible secret. I just don't like it. But getting back to what you said. That you already figured out how to keep me asleep without sedation?"

"Right," Eames said. "Well, you come into my dream. Every time you try to wake up, I keep you there."

"And how are you going to stop me from being lucid?"

Eames smiled at that. After all these years, Arthur was still underestimating him. "I'm a dream criminal, Arthur. If you let me in, I can undo you."

Arthur looked away then, as if trying to suppress a smirk. He had a filthy mind sometimes, especially when he was trying not to have one. Eames liked that angle.

"Right, but think about that. Does anyone else you currently know, know you as well as I do? I can make you let go. You know that. I've made you let go of your temper, your control, your inhibitions. We've sparred, beaten each other, on at least one occasion I've made you laugh until you cried. You let me seduce you..."

Arthur held up a hand, looking scandalized. "I seem to remember my hand down your pants that first time."

"Well, all right, Arthur," Eames said, munificent, "if that's you're idea of seduction, then yes, you seduced me. The point is..."

"Oh, seriously?" Arthur asked. "Eight years later and you don't like my techniques?"

"Arthur, your hand was in my trousers because I wanted it to be."

"Because I seduced you, asshole."

Eames sighed, long-suffering. "It happened, all right, that's what matters. Let me get to the point."

Arthur rolled his eyes and deigned to let Eames continue. 

"The point is, you let me in. You let me fuck you and do things to you which I flatter myself no one else has done. You let me..."

"Okay, Trent Reznor, all right, we've established that _you get me closer to god._ Jesus. How do you plan on even doing this?"

"That," Eames said, "we'll see when we go under together. So." He patted Arthur's leg, a friendly gesture. "I shall run this brilliant idea past Yusuf, hmm? No compounds. Natural sleep. You, me, all our desires and fears, our darkest hopes and shames, on display with no inhibition. Doesn't that sound fun?"

Arthur looked horrified.


	2. Chapter 2

Shutting off the water, Arthur stepped out of the shower and wrapped himself in a towel. The showers were common ones, like you'd see in a university dorm: many of them lined up side by side. Presently, he was the only one in here, and for that he was grateful. There were other people on the floor above, "patients" that Yusuf was working with, but they kept to themselves.

Arthur wondered if he was a patient as well. 

He got dressed quietly into plain, flannel pajamas that he had brought with him for this excursion. Didn't look into the mirror because he didn't like what he saw there lately. 

Music was playing from the room where he'd been sleeping. "Mood Indigo," Duke Ellington. Yusuf liked this kind of music, as Arthur had discovered in his few days here. He said it helped him think. Mal had loved this stuff, too. Arthur kept a bright, clear memory of dancing with her in the Cobbs' kitchen. She'd been heavily pregnant and it was hard to get his arms around her. Hearing the same music again didn't make him feel sad, this time. He thought maybe he really was going crazy and getting illogical, because he honestly felt her presence, comforting him. One of her slender hands in his, the other on his shoulder. 

Arthur never believed in signs; he thought that was stupid and pointless. The world was cause and effect. But here was Mal, whispering to him through the many years, through a song they had once danced to.

As he crept out of the bathroom, he heard the low rumble of Eames's voice from a few doors down, over the music. Following it came Yusuf's clipped reply. He moved closer until he was standing outside the door, which was slightly ajar. Years of practice had made him the most silent of creepers.

"Do you think it wise to ask that of him?" Yusuf said to Eames.

Arthur frowned. What was Eames going to ask of him now?

"Wiser, I think," Eames answered, "than continuing to pump him full of psychotropic drugs."

"You keep on saying that, Eames, and you could not be more wrong. It was something we tried once, out of desperation. You're quite lucky that you missed the beginning of this."

Silence followed that, and Arthur was grateful. He didn't want Eames to know how he'd been when he showed up on Yusuf's doorstep, babbling about stars falling on him and dead hands grabbing at his ankles through the floor of the London Tube. Nothing shamed him more than weakness of the mind.

"We can't afford to lose a mind like his," Eames said.

"You're fond of him."

"Of course I'm bloody fond of him, but that's not the point."

Arthur smiled in spite of himself. Eames was such a sap. He counted on it.

"The point is," Eames continued, "that the dream-heist business is nothing without Arthur. It's a Camelot and he is its new king. He is to crime what Don Corleone was to... well, to crime."

This time, Arthur stifled a laugh.

"There's no question that he's the best," Yusuf said. "But perhaps it's taken its toll. He mustn't sacrifice himself to it."

"He won't," Eames said. "He'll return from this. Arthur is like Gandalf. Right now he's like Gandalf the Grey. But in eight days' time he'll return as Gandalf the White and nothing will ever stop him again."

"Eight days?" Yusuf asked. "Are you being literary, or do you really need that much time?"

"I'm not sure yet what I need. I need the point man to return." Eames's voice was somber now, with an edge of worry. "Currently that's all I know."

"He's quite special to you."

"He's quite special, full stop."

"Eames, be serious. It's no secret that you've been in each other's trousers for years."

"So?"

"So his are the only trousers that you keep returning to." There was something in Yusuf's voice, something that Arthur had never heard in his limited time knowing him. It had never occurred to him before that Yusuf and Eames might actually be friends. Maybe he'd never thought of Eames as having friends, before this. "That's the only reason I'm really allowing you both to go through with this," Yusuf went on.

"Because we fucked?"

"Because you like him and I think that gives you a fair a chance as any. Does he trust you?"

"Guess we'll find out."

They both fell quiet then, and the song ended. Arthur feigned a few light footsteps―he didn't want them to know how much he had heard--and knocked on the door-frame. "If you two are through discussing me and Eames fucking," he said, "I'm pretty much ready to start."

Eames didn't even have the good grace to look embarrassed, and Yusuf outright laughed.

"Come on in then, Arthur," Yusuf said.

They had pulled another bed into the room, and the PASIV was between them, on a small table. Eames was in one bed, Yusuf sat on the edge of the other. Yusuf got up and offered the bed to Arthur, who sat down and awaited further instructions.

"Right," Eames said. "So here's the plan. The PASIV is just for dreamshare this time. No other compounds. No sedatives on your end, Arthur. No timers. It's just to connect the two of us, in my dream. So, one quick knock-out for me, so that I get there before you, and then I wait for you to fall asleep naturally and I pull you in."

"I'll still be lucid," Arthur pointed out.

"All dreams start lucid. You start dreaming the last thing you thought of; that waking limbo before sleep really takes you. Normal people lose conscious control after that. I will be waiting to take control from you."

"But you won't have conscious control either?" Arthur asked. "You'll still remember what to do?"

"I'll have control at first, just like you. If all goes according to plan, we'll both be dreaming naturally a few hours in. If I can keep you from waking yourself up, and I can keep chipping away at your control, we'll both lose track of reality. Of course," he went on, this time with a little trepidation, "there is one way to make certain of that."

Arthur's hand went automatically to the pocket sewn into his pajama bottoms. So, this was what Eames was going to ask of him. As if to confirm this, Eames reached into his own pocket and took out his poker chip. He set it aside on the table.

"We won't have them in the dream. There mustn't be a reality check, you see. The idea of this is to lose track of reality."

Arthur swallowed hard. Since Mal had invented the totem, he'd never slept without it.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

"Right," he said. He tried to appear confident as he put the red die on the table, in front of the PASIV, next to the poker chip. "Good idea."

"Well then," Yusuf said. "I won't be lurking around, then. You'll never sleep naturally if I'm sitting here keeping track. If anything should happen, I'll hear it. Arthur, it's just regular sleeping. This kind of thing doesn't require a watchful eye."

"Uh huh," Arthur said. _Regular sleeping._ It sounded so appealing. He hadn't done that since childhood. He wondered what it was like.

"I won't say 'sweet dreams,'" Yusuf said, before closing the door behind him and leaving the two of them alone in the dark room.

They each grabbed a line from the PASIV and hooked up with practiced ease. Eames turned to him in the near-dark, the only light from a streetlamp outside, slanting in from under the blinds. The only sound the rain on the window. It was almost like a real bedroom. Arthur turned on his side to face Eames.

"You sleep in a chair when you're working," Eames said, his voice sleep-low, almost conspiratorial. "And on your back when you're watchful. And when you're most comfortable, you sleep face-down with your arms wrapped around your pillow. Never got how you don't wake with a stiff neck, like that."

Arthur shrugged. "It never bothered me."

"You should sleep like that this time."

Arthur turned over, careful of the cannula in his wrist. He'd never slept in this position with the PASIV. It was a little awkward.

"Do you feel tired?" Eames asked.

"Beyond tired," he answered. "Beyond exhausted. But I can never stay asleep unless I'm lucid."

"This time you will. I'll be waiting for you. All right?"

"We'll see," Arthur said.

"Ever the optimist."

"Go on," Arthur said. "Go under. I'll be there in a few, probably."

"Good night, Arthur," Eames said, as he reached over and pressed the button that would put him out first.

It only took seconds.

"Good night, Eames," Arthur said.

And he waited to fall asleep.

** ** ** **

 

Eames hadn't exactly constructed a dream space, but had done what he normally did when he was just planning on sleeping, which was to let it happen naturally. Someone as dream-proficient as he was naturally had more control over the details. But he was pretty good at just letting things evolve.

His subconscious mind had built a 1930's speak-easy. Maybe it had something to do with Yusuf's music, he thought, in those last few moments between wakefulness and sleep.

He looked at his own projections, which were made up of pinstriped gangsters, gun molls and boisterous rum-runners. A stage dominated the room, and suddenly Eames dreamed up a big band to put on it. His projections really liked that and they filled the dance floor. 

He looked at himself in the way one is aware of one's dream-body without mirrors. He'd dressed himself to suit the style. This pleased him. He thought maybe Arthur would like it, too.

He sat at a round table, alone, and waited for Arthur. He easily recalled that Arthur was going to sleep naturally and that it would take him a little longer to join in the dream. Eames was still lucid, for now. When Arthur did decide to join him, he'd have to think of some clever way to fuck things up. He hadn't thought of one yet, but Eames thrived in chaos and had no doubts that he would adapt to whatever Arthur required. 

He drank dream-moonshine until he got dream-tipsy, and listened to dream-music with its garbled, unintelligible dream-lyrics. His projections danced, and as time passed, their dancing became less coherent. It was a good start.

The road to entropy was a slippery one, and he really hoped Arthur would join him on the slide downward.

Finally, Arthur showed up, clad in the same pajamas he'd been wearing when he fell asleep. He came in through the secret door that had no password and immediately found Eames in the crowd.

"Really?" he asked, as he took a seat opposite Eames at the round table. "A speak-easy? I thought we were being casual. I'm a little underdressed."

"Well that's a good start, isn't it," Eames said. "You see, you've already shown up to a party in your pajamas. A typical dream archetype."

"But I did it on purpose," Arthur said. "And I don't feel any of that anxiety you're supposed to feel in dreams."

"What if I stripped you naked?"

"It wouldn't be the first time we messed around in front of our projections. Big deal."

"That will change," Eames said. 

"How? I've seen every dreamscape there is. Nothing is going to shock me out of lucidity." Arthur pointed to an empty table, and it flipped over, spilling glasses and silverware to the floor. Then it proceeded to hover in mid-air. "Tricks of logic don't work with me. I know them all."

"I'll wear you down," Eames promised.

Arthur raised an eyebrow, skeptical and annoyed. There was a challenge in his eyes as he stood up and started unbuttoning the shirt of his pajamas. He didn't stop there, casting the top off and quickly divesting himself of the pajama bottoms.

"Splendid!" Eames said, when Arthur stood naked in front of him, in the middle of the speak-easy. Eames's projections all turned to look at him. "You are such a shameless thing." He stood up and made a sweeping gesture at all of his projections. "Arthur, ladies and gentlemen!" He led a round of applause from the room.

"I'm so totally not embarrassed by this, Eames. This is nothing you haven't seen before." He strode off in the direction of the dance floor, grabbed one of the female parts of Eames's psyche, and thoroughly slid his tongue between her lips.

Eames actually felt a little jealous, which was ridiculous, since Arthur was really just snogging him, after all.

"Stop it," Eames said, going after Arthur and pulling them apart. "I don't want to watch that."

"It's you, idiot."

Eames pulled him by the arm. "I still don't want to watch. In a dream, every emotion is on display, turned up to eleven, and we act on them. I don't want to feel envious right now."

"You're worse at this than I am," Arthur said, smirking in that irritatingly stuck up way that he had.

"I'm better at it," Eames said, "and if you had a clue about your own inhibitions, you would understand that. I'm already losing my grip. You're still holding on. Look at yourself. You're starkers in the middle of a room full of people, everyone is staring at you and you're molesting random women. People are _watching_ you, Arthur. Where's your decorum? Where is your gun? Where's your _totem?_ "

Arthur flinched, subtly, and glanced at where he had discarded his pajama bottoms on the floor. They were gone. When he looked back at Eames, the superior smirk was already back in place. "I left it topside. I didn't forget."

Eames circled him slowly, and when he got behind him, he placed a hand on the soft skin of Arthur's shoulderblade. He stroked his thumb over a freckle that he knew very well. Slid around to his shoulder and then his right arm, where a scar marked him: the even, horizontal slice of a sharp blade.

"You've never told me what this is from," he said.

Arthur shrugged. He didn't turn to look at Eames, as if something had finally gotten to him, just a little. "A scuffle," he said. "And, seriously? This is your way of getting me to give up control? You're going to try to shame me?"

"You're the one who took your clothes off, Arthur. I had nothing to do with that. Maybe you're trying to shame yourself."

"Why would I even..."

Eames turned him around and kissed him before he could think any more. Arthur thinking rationally was exactly what he didn't want, and it was time to improvise. He went at it slow, the way Arthur sometimes liked it and the way Eames almost always liked it. He cupped the angles of his jaw and slid his thumbs across his cheekbones. 

"I would never shame you," he said against Arthur's lips. "Not on purpose. Not over something important. I do like to tease you." He punctuated each thought with an open-mouthed kiss. "I do like to poke holes into your armor. But shame is not in my arsenal when it comes to you. It's a cheap weapon and it never works on the people for whom it should work."

Arthur was kissing him back now, sliding cool fingers up the side of his arm. "We're wasting time," he said, but didn't stop kissing, didn't stop pressing closer.

"Putting my tongue into your mouth is never a waste of my time, and it keeps yours from wagging."

"Where are we now?" Arthur asked, pulling away slightly, opening his eyes and looking around curiously.

"Hmm?" Eames pulled away, too, and had a look himself. "I have no idea."

It was a suburban street, with that American feel to it, lined with what Eames thought of as Brady Bunch type houses. 

"You didn't construct this?" Arthur asked.

"...Maybe? I wasn't paying attention. It just took me here. Maybe this is where I imagine you growing up."

"It didn't look like this," Arthur said. He was still stark naked, standing in the middle of the road. "I grew up in California. Why would you want to dream about where I grew up?"

"I don't know," Eames said. "I didn't do it on purpose. We could have a look around and see what myths I've built around your childhood."

Palm trees sprung up suddenly from the ground, throwing clumps of earth skyward as they grew to twenty feet in a few seconds. 

"California," Eames said, by way of explanation.

And then it started to snow.

" _Not_ California," Arthur said. "And now I'm fucking cold."

"The holidays," Eames insisted. "Let's go into your house. What I imagine to be your house."

Arthur shrugged gamely. Eames was utterly surprised to notice that he led the way, because how would he even know where to go if Eames had constructed this? Something must have clicked for him.

Arthur took him into one of the homes that lined the street, looked around and said, "My house wasn't really like this." 

Eames didn't ask, _Then why are we here?_ because he knew this meant he was getting somewhere. Instead he said, "I imagine your bedroom would be at the end of the hall. Show it to me."

Arthur, still naked and beginning to forget about this fact, led him down the hall into the farthest room. 

"This is all wrong," he said. "Really, Eames. I didn't have Megadeth posters on my wall. I didn't really have any posters."

"What did you have?"

Arthur looked around. He made a flicking motion with one hand, and suddenly the walls were bare, dark grey. A bed was crammed into a corner, a single lamp stood on a mostly empty desk, and a digital alarm clock blinked 12:00 in red numbers.

"I didn't need much," Arthur said.

Eames sat down on sheets that were clean and cool. "Come to bed?" He took Arthur's wrist and tugged him closer.

"No," Arthur said, pulling away. "I don't want to do it here."

"Do it? I didn't even suggest that. Aren't you tired?" He patted the bed.

Arthur eyed it at once both warily and longingly. "I thought I'd sleep for days," he said, so softly that Eames almost missed it. He coughed into his hand, pulled his narrow shoulders in a little tighter and slowly came closer to the bed. "I thought it would be over, if I could get some sleep. That the next day would be better."

"Was it?" Eames had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. That loss of his, when he was a child.

"No, it was worse. I was alone."

"You aren't now." He pulled Arthur to the bed, pulled him down beside him.

"This isn't right," Arthur said. "Something is wrong. Where's my..." He reached down to where he would have had a pocket if he'd been wearing pants.

"Your what?" Eames said.

"My fucking _totem_ Eames!"

The room shook and shifted, plaster falling off the walls. The clock blinked at midnight a few more times, once at 3:16, and then it shut off. Lucidity came back to Eames like a wave, turning him over. He thought, _Fuck, I almost had him._

"I have to go," Arthur said. "I can't do this here."

He left the room, and Eames couldn't hold him back. Physically he could, if he had to, but there wasn't a part of him that could make Arthur do something against his will. He let him go.

But he followed.

** ** ** **

 

He caught up with Arthur in a safe house that he knew he hadn't constructed himself. Arthur's mind was starting to fill in the blanks, and Arthur's projections were starting to populate the dream. The safe house was a squat metal building in the middle of a snowy field, with bars on the lone window. He could see Arthur through them. A cadre of military police surrounded it. Those were definitely not Eames's. 

So he pulled a gun and started shooting them.

"Hey!" Arthur yelled out the window. "Stop it! Stop shooting! They haven't done anything wrong."

Eames mowed them all down merrily, watching their blood fly in the moonlight and steam on the icy snow, melting it into a red haze. Killing them felt so necessary. He forgot why, though. For Arthur, somehow.

"Come out and I'll stop," Eames said.

"You're fucking crazy, Eames," Arthur shouted from behind the bars. "You realize we're dreaming, right?"

"Are we? Then why are you still locked in there?" He felt gleeful, as if something had broken free of him. Maybe he was riding the dream. Surely he was. But he liked it better when the dream rode him. "And why are you so upset? Come out, if we're dreaming. Come on out, if you're the master of your dreams."

"This is _your_ dream, remember?"

"When has that ever stopped you?" Eames challenged.

Arthur wrapped his hands around the bars. The moonlight lit him in a cool glow, and his breath steamed the air. He looked conflicted, afraid to try. 

"I'll blow that fucking building up if you don't come out," Eames said, grinning. He felt like the Big Bad Wolf. 

If Arthur got the reference, he didn't acknowledge it. "If you do that, you'll wake me."

"How can you have dreamed for so long and not understood dreaming? Come out."

Arthur looked thoughtful for a moment, cautious. Slowly, he pulled his hands away from the bars. They melted out of existence once he was no longer touching them. Arthur hiked himself through the open window. He was still naked. He landed in a crouch, next to the bodies of the projections Eames had wasted.

"You killed the police," Arthur said. "That's illegal, you could get in trouble, but the paper work would be a bitch."

 _Good_ , Eames thought. _Meaningful nonsense. Dream-talk._

"Aren't you cold?" Eames asked.

Arthur looked down at himself as he stood up. He started walking to Eames, the red haze somehow clearing a path for him. "You made it hot," he said. "With all this blood."

"Come and have sex with me in the bloody snow," Eames said. He dropped the gun and held out his hand. "It'll be just like the old days, before the horseless carriage. When people did that sort of thing. Jack The Ripper."

Arthur pushed him down and straddled him. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "I don't understand."

"That's all right. You're not supposed to. It's nonsense. Try it."

"I don't like nonsense. I never speak nonsense. You're naked too."

Eames looked down at where Arthur was straddling his hips. "So I am." He ran his hands along Arthur's thighs. He was so pale under the full moon – a moon that Eames couldn't see in the sky, though it must have been there.

"Are we having sex?" Arthur asked. "It doesn't feel like we are."

"Your police are rising from the dead." Eames didn't know why he said it. The words just slipped out, but as soon as he heard them, he knew they were true. "You've got zombie sex-police, Arthur. There is so much wrong with you."

Arthur turned his head, frowning in the way that always meant he was ready to get down to business. Usually violent business. "I don't want them now," he said.

Eames handed him a gun he plucked out of the snow. "Kill them. Aim for the head." He put the gun into Arthur's hand. 

The small army of dead military police dragged their bloody bodies up to attention and began to converge on them in the snow. Arthur didn't raise the gun.

"They were my brothers in arms," he said. "They protected me."

"Now they're going to eat your brains," Eames said. 

Arthur stood up and dusted snow off of his knees. "I'll confront them. We can reason this out."

"Sometimes you have to run the other way," Eames said, also rising from the snow. "I know your way is to go towards danger. You face things. That's your nature. But Arthur."

The bodies closed in on Arthur, even as he held his hands up, placating, reasonable. As he he could reason with the drones that wanted to eat him.

"But Arthur," Eames said, "sometimes when the building is on fire you have to run _away_ from it. If you know the killer is in the tunnel, you sometimes have to not follow him in."

Arthur turned towards him when he said that last bit, his eyes wide and his mouth parted in surprise. "How did you..."

And then the guards grabbed him by the arms and legs and dragged him down. Eames clearly saw one of them bite him on the shoulder, ripping off a chunk of skin the size of his fist. Arthur screamed, fired the gun aimlessly, tried to claw his way through the writhing bodies. But they were pulling him under the snow.

Eames ran towards him, throwing himself into the mass of bodies, calling out his name. He scrambled in the snow, shoving at bloody, torn limbs. None of them seemed interested in him. He dug through them, frantic, surging with adrenaline and some terrible, overwhelming, frightening, _wonderful_ emotion, like hysteria and joy all at once. "Arthur!" he shouted. "Arthur, I want you back! I'm coming to find you!"

But Arthur had disappeared. And with him gone, the bodies stopped writhing. They melted out of existence, into the blueish snow.

Eames sat back on his heels, the night once again tinted with blood. He was shaking hard, panting, weirdly thrilled. 

He was going to find him again. This was all far from over.

** ** ** **

Arthur ran. He didn't know if he was running to something or away from it, only that he was running. Head down, shoulders pulled forward, legs sprinting as fast as he could. His surroundings blurred by and he thought he was missing something. Some element that he always had with him, some constant reminder, that was now gone. He felt insane, afraid, and strangely exultant.

He slowed down to round a corner and saw the outside of a building made of dark wood. A sign hung above the door. He couldn't read the words on it, at first. He could see the letters, and they filled him with dread, even though at first they didn't make sense. He took a second to search for the meaning in them, to make them fit.

 _Let Me Go_ , the sign read. And beneath it, in neon: _Funeral Parlor._

Arthur tucked his hands into the pockets of the torn jacket he was now wearing. Scuffed his shoes on the concrete walkway, self-conscious about wearing plain clothes, just old jeans and a plain shirt under a ragged jacket. But he had to go in. He had to be there.

The voice singing from inside drew him in. A lone female voice, young, shaky, off-key. Amazing Grace.

Arthur ducked his head, hands still jammed into his pockets, and went up the stairs. It was necessary to see this. Unavoidable.

It played out just as he remembered, with everyone turning to look at him. The young girl ("Sister Of The Deceased" declared a neon sign above her head,) fumbled on the second verse of Amazing Grace before finding the words again. She looked at him as she sang, her eyes accusing.

" _I rot as crows peck out my eyes  
in waters still and grey  
I once was was dead, but now I rise  
and on your dreams I prey...  
_

"No," Arthur said, annoyed at this intrusion into reality. "Those are the wrong words."

The little girl stopped singing. The congregation kept staring at him - family and friends in mourning. He didn't belong here.

"You don't get to tell me how to sing," the girl said, pointing her finger. "You didn't even try to save my sister."

"I _did_ try."

"You didn't," she said. "You're Arthur now. Arthur wasn't even here for this. Just some stupid kid, that's all she got."

"Yet, unfortunately," said another voice, this one from behind him, "even Arthur doesn't save everyone." Her accent was unmistakable.

Arthur turned and saw Mal sitting in one of the pews, a dark veil obscuring her features. He couldn't see her face, which was just as well, because he knew what it would look like. Dom sat beside her, his face blank, his eyes refusing to meet Arthur's.

"Dom, tell her that's not true," Arthur said. "Tell her I would have done anything."

Dom stood up and walked over to him. Arthur wanted to turn away from his empty eyes, such a dull blue in the low parlor light. But he wasn't any good at turning away. Someone had told him that once.

Dom cupped the back of his neck and kissed him on the mouth, cold and listless. "Would I do that to my own brother?" he asked. 

It didn't occur to Arthur to pull away. Dom was making a point. It was one that Arthur didn't agree with, though. "You're not my brother," he said. "You're more like my father."

"You don't even know who your father was," Dom said. "You just chose me to fill in the place he left. Maybe he was nothing like me."

"Why did you kiss me?" Arthur asked.

"Because you made me think of Mal before she jumped."

"Oh," Arthur said.

"But you're not," Dom said, and then pushed him, hard enough to send him reeling backwards. 

Arthur fell in slow motion. Behind him, the coffin lid opened; he heard it creak. On his way down, he turned to face it and saw that it was empty. Thankfully, blissfully empty. Falling would end this. Would end everything. And it was so easy.

A hand grabbed the back of his coat at the collar. Arthur stopped falling, suspended with his arms out to his sides. He hovered over the coffin. It was now filled with dirty water. The joy he felt at hovering over it, just on the edge, filled him with an alien shame. Why would he want to hover in safety like this, here? At a funeral? So close to the coffin himself? Why did it feel so good? And why did it feel so good to be stopped, and held back like this? He questioned himself as he stared into the water and satin.

"Be careful, lambie-lamb," Eames said behind him. "If you go in there, it'll take me forever to get you out."

** ** ** **

Eames followed the trail of blood, which soon ran dry. He was never close enough to see Arthur. Just close enough to miss him turning corners, disappearing behind walls, and behind shifting scenes. A football field (the American kind,) a school, a street, a pub, a carnival, a movie theater, a prison. 

And Arthur, always a few steps ahead of him, shifting. First naked, then in a suit and jacket, then in jeans and an old coat.

Arthur kept running. Eames walked behind, because Arthur wasn't as fast as he thought. He acted like he was running, but Eames saw clearly that it was as if he were going through water. He struggled for speed, but never gained any.

Eventually he slowed to a stop, and Eames caught up. Arthur went into a place called "Let Me Go Funeral Parlor." Eames watched him push open the double-doors (his posture was terrible, and defensive, so unlike the Arthur that he knew, who stood straight-backed and even-shouldered.) The sound of a young girl singing floated out from the doors. The melody was instantly recognizable, but Eames couldn't make out the words.

He went to the window and looked through the stained glass.

Arthur appeared distorted through the blues and greens of the glass. The people attending the funeral all glared at him. Eames couldn't see their expressions, but he could feel their intent. He felt a terrible, consuming guilt from this place. A burden, like a physical weight.

He saw the girl stop singing and point to Arthur, saw Mal, just a shadow under a veil, and Dom – a shadow without a veil. Dom rose, walked to Arthur, and kissed him. Eames's hand tightened on the sill. He wanted to break the window. Then Dom pushed Arthur backwards, toward the coffin.

Arthur spun, arms out, as if to catch his balance and stop himself from falling in.

He needn't have.

Eames saw himself appear behind Arthur and catch him by the collar. 

_Is that how Arthur sees me?_ he wondered. Because the Eames that he was looking at was beautiful and clear, radiant in the candlelight.

He needed a closer look at Arthur's fantasy of him, so he went around the front and unobtrusively pushed the doors open. It was easy to sneak in when Arthur already thought he was here.

"You stopped me from falling," Arthur said to the other Eames, the angelic looking one.

"Yes, of course I did, darling," said this other Eames. His smile was serene, sweet, and full of love. He was clean-shaven, and the real Eames ran his hand over his own face, feeling a day's worth of stubble. Arthur liked him shaven. He would keep that in mind. 

"What if I wanted to fall?" Arthur asked.

"I would not let you, duckie. Who else would be my pet? You mustn't go yet, dearest. Our business here is not finished."

 _Does he think I talk like that?_ Eames wondered. _Maybe I do? Or does he want me to?_ And then he realized that of course, this was Arthur's subconscious version of him. He was watching an archetype of himself.

Lucidity flooded him. The dream, the experiment, everything they were trying to accomplish came back to him. The funeral parlor warped. Arthur frowned at the slight ripple in the dream, but he was still under. He was still unaware. Eames held his breath and carefully, silently watched Arthur's projection of him.

The Eames projection pulled Arthur away from the coffin, put his arms around him, pet his hair like a dog, kissed his face. Arthur allowed all of this the way he never would in real life. But of course, this was how it went in the deepest dreams. _We are who we are not,_ Eames thought.

Arthur's projection of Dom returned and said, "Eames, you know better than that. Arthur doesn't really have any feelings. He's more or less empty inside, but he is good at doing what he's told. He's _adequate_ , anyway."

"And not always," Mal said from behind her veil.

"And," added the young girl who had been singing at the funeral, "not when it counts. When it matters the most, he falls short. Always has."

Eames felt his gut twist at those words – surely that wasn't how Arthur saw himself, but maybe it was how he thought others saw him.

The projection of Eames suddenly shoved Arthur away, causing him to stumble backwards. 

"It's quite true that you fail when the most is at stake, I suppose, my pigeon," the projection said. "You did almost get us killed."

"That wasn't even my fault," Arthur said, his eyes wide, betrayed. At once, he was dressed in a three-piece suit: midnight-black and buttoned to his neck and wrists. "I'm not some kind of ninja, I'm just..."

"Just what, poppet?" the projection Eames asked.

The real Eames felt such horror at this abject treatment of Arthur, he was about to call it quits. He tried to push forward, but Arthur's projections blocked his way.

"Just a man?" the projection said. And then laughed at him. "Or just a _boy_?"

"Fuck you," Arthur snarled.

And while the real Eames wanted to cheer for him for saying that, the projection of Eames slapped Arthur, open-handed, so hard that it almost knocked him over. The real Eames shoved projections aside, feeling sick.

Arthur straightened up slowly. His eyes looked glazed, empty. "How could you hit me?" he asked. His voice came out low, almost a whisper, his words slow and sluggish. "How could you? How could you?"

"I didn't!" Eames shouted, fighting his way toward Arthur. The parlor stretched, longer and longer, and the more he ran, shoved, and pushed ahead, the farther away Arthur got. "Arthur, at least hear me! I didn't, I never would, not like that. And you're not my pet or my duckling or my darling or my _anything._ "

"Eames?" Arthur asked, his eyes scanning over the heads of the crowd. "Where are you really?"

"And you're not my sweetheart, or my pigeon, or my lamb or any of that shit!"

The parlor shrank back to its original size. The projection of Eames faded into nothing. The rest of the projections cleared a path for him, finally. He made it to Arthur, gripped him by the wrist. "You're not my _anything_ , Arthur, do you see? I would never think of you as belonging to me. I could never own you. _You_ , the dark god of dreams, whose very shadow is feared in the world of mind-heists. Would you ever stand for me coddling you? Would you ever stand for me striking you? You would shoot me in the face, our history together be damned. That's _why_ , Arthur. It's why I keep returning to your trousers. Sex is our uncomplicated way of saying all of this."

He gripped the back of Arthur's neck and kissed him, hot and charged and hungry. Arthur tasted like incense and candle-smoke.

"I fuck you because I _like_ you," Eames said, all teeth and lips against Arthur's mouth. "I let you fuck me for the same reason."

Arthur seemed to snap out of his confusion then, and he pulled away. The suit was gone, replaced again by the jeans, the plain shirt and torn coat. To Eames's horror, he was a child again, no more than seventeen. Eames took a few hasty steps back, feeling a terrible guilt for having kissed him like this.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know we were going back to this. I didn't mean to... I didn't mean to take that from you."

Arthur's eyes went hooded, defiant under the wire-frame glasses he was suddenly wearing. There was an unpleasant, sneery smirk on his face.

"So what?" he said. "It's not a big deal. I've been fucking since I was fourteen, did you know that? Second week of high school in fact. I let the upper crust girls ride me blind. I let one of them tie me to her fancy bed and bring me gin and tonic until I couldn't think, and I let her fuck me dry every few weeks after school before her parents came home."

A projection of a young girl slid up behind Arthur. She was staggeringly beautiful, under a face-full of makeup. Her eyes were cold and dark as she slid her sharp nails through Arthur's curls. She took his glasses off, threw them to the floor and crushed them under her stiletto heel.

"I let them do it because I liked it. Because it made me hard, on the outside and on the inside."

"Arthur," Eames said, gentle. "You can't intimidate me and you won't drive me away by acting like this. I hustled for years, all right mate, since I was fifteen. I'm the last person who would be ashamed of you. We are who we are."

Arthur stood down, dropping his gaze to his crushed glasses. The girl slunk away. 

"What happened after that girl?" Eames asked. 

"Nothing," Arthur said. 

"You fucking liar," said a voice behind him. It was a girl's voice, shrill and hysterical with tears. "How can you deny me, how dare you fail me and then deny me? You said you would never let me go!"

Arthur turned, his eyes wide, and took a few steps back, almost into Eames.

The coffin made another appearance, only this time it wasn't empty. Wet hands clawed their way out, sloshing water onto the wood floor with every movement. She hiked herself onto her elbows and peered out, a ragged doll of a corpse. Half of her mouth was rotted away, giving her a hideous, grinning look. Filthy blond hair clung to her blue, bloated face.

"Jesus Christ," Eames said, his hands on Arthur's shoulders, "you've got a Mal of your own. You and Cobb and your fucking guilt!"

The corpse of the girl vaulted herself out of the coffin and launched herself at Arthur. She stank of putrid water. Eames grabbed Arthur and pulled him aside.

"She's quick," Arthur said, "run!"

Eames didn't need to be told twice. He ran, Arthur gripping him by the arm and pulling him along beside him, and they crashed through the double-doors, with Arthur's zombie-girl on their heels.

The stairs outside the door no longer went down to the street: now they went up. 

"Really, Arthur?" Eames panted.

They charged up the stairs, too slow. The girl snatched at their ankles, snarling. Eames was terrified to turn around and look at how close she was. He felt her breath on the backs of his legs, the skim of her wet fingertips on his calves.

"Fuck, fuck!" Arthur panted, looking over his shoulder.

Eames didn't look back. He just looked up.

And at the top of the stairs, crashing down with the force of an avalanche, was a wave of water so tremendous it made a tsunami look insignificant.

"Oh, fucking _no_ ," Eames said. Dismay and panic swept him faster than water could. 

It hit, tumbling him over, until he didn't know what was up or down. He lost Arthur in the rushing wave as it swept him away. And he couldn't breathe, couldn't get his bearings and couldn't get any fucking oxygen. This was too much, he couldn't do this anymore. 

And that was it, right there: his fear, not Arthur's. Being washed away, consumed to death, swept out never to return, and smothered under the weight. A lonely, alien death. 

It was time to end this dream, for he now knew what it was. He remembered it all. He recalled their experiment, and that he had come up with this idea to help Arthur.

With relief, he called all of this lucidity back to his mind. Under the waves, struggling to breathe, Eames tried to wake up.

And then he remembered that he was under sedation.


	3. Chapter 3

Arthur came awake flailing, but aware. He remembered his surroundings at once, like he hadn't the last time. He was sweating, bathed in it; it cooled and made him shiver. The cold pressure of the dream-water clung to him. He gasped, unable to catch his breath. He sat up and leaned forward, trying to expand his lungs.

A noise of distress distracted him and he looked to the other bed. The slant of light from beneath the blinds illuminated Eames in red. He was on his back, his hand pressed to his chest, eyes closed but moving rapidly beneath pale eyelids.

"Fuck," Arthur said, pulling himself out of his bed and stumbling over to the other bed.

He sat down beside him, frantically wondering how much he'd dosed himself with. A tiny amount, Eames had said. Not nearly enough to dump him into limbo if the dream should kill him – the Fischer case had made Arthur paranoid of that. But Eames hadn't used much. Not even enough to knock him too far out.

He knew that kicking him awake might earn him one of Eames's ridiculously powerful fists to his face. He was dream-panicking, trying to wake up, unsure of where to go.

"Hey," Arthur said, softly, quiet and calm. He laid his palm over Eames's forehead, which felt hot. "Come on, we can start over." He touched his hair, darker now from months in England, no longer sun-bleached. "Wake up," he said, shaking him lightly by the shoulder. "Even just a little."

Eames stirred beneath his hand, took a shuddering breath and cracked his eyes open. He looked dazed and unsure of his surroundings, still under sedation. But at least the dream was over.

"I'll come back under," Arthur said. "All right? I'll finish it with you."

Eames looked like he was searching for something to say that might make sense. "Underneath," was what he came up with. Then: "The ocean."

"I know." Arthur readjusted the cannula in his own wrist, tugging the line from the PASIV to give himself more slack. Then he lay down beside Eames in the small bed. "I'm sorry I woke up. Your water kicked me. And I'm sorry about the zombies."

Eames smiled, his eyes toward the ceiling. Then he turned onto his side, away from Arthur. In seconds, he was out again.

Arthur thought about it for a second, and then turned on his side, too. He didn't usually like sleeping this way, but there wasn't any room in the bed for him to sprawl on his belly the way he liked to. So he rested his forehead against Eames's hair and closed his eyes.

He was still so tired. 

** ** ** **

Arthur came under only seconds after Eames did this time, except Eames didn't know where he was. He felt lost in the dream and he realized suddenly that Arthur had constructed this one. 

With a small thrill that felt like success, he wondered if Arthur had tried to construct it, or if it had simply happened. They weren't all the way in the clear yet. Arthur had started dreaming naturally around the middle of their last venture, but that didn't mean he would be able to continue to do it. Especially if he went back to work with the PASIV. He'd been lucid dreaming since childhood, practically. It would take more than a little screwing around to undo that.

 _Feed a man a fish..._ Eames thought.

Arthur would need to re-learn fishing. This was a good start. He'd seen his dream police and his guilt-zombie. Arthur had come back under with him, so perhaps there was more that he wanted input on. 

Or perhaps Arthur just hadn't wanted to leave him alone in his sedation. Either way, Eames was glad.

In the meantime, he was surrounded by a craggy wasteland of jagged rocks. A small, abandoned and boarded up little house stood against the grey backdrop of misty sky. And it was cold. Definitely Arthur's dream, then. Eames guessed that Arthur was inside the house, but the door was barred. Shattering it would only destroy whatever Arthur had going on inside there.

The wasteland offered him various ways in, however. Sinkholes and tiny caves scarred the landscape, as if Arthur wanted him to sneak in from underneath. Some of them looked deliberate: Arthur's well-worn dreamscape escape routes. But some of it looked like random dream-logic. Eames took a few hesitant steps. The gaps and crags felt incidental, which meant that Arthur hadn't thought out some of these.

Eames slipped feet-first into one of the holes in the wasteland of slippery rocks. He eased down deliberately inside of it, where it was dark and damp. Once on the inside, he felt the fear of Arthur's terrifying projections. If they were out of control, they would kick him awake. 

This slope, however, wasn't quite so slippery. It was dark as hell and the cave was a tight fit. He wondered if he could keep going down, or if his shoulders were too broad.

 _And here you are flattering yourself that you won't fit into Arthur's holes,_ he thought, and allowed himself a laugh. Sometimes the subconscious was so obvious. The path seemed to open beneath him and he wiggled through it, descending further. 

When he was through to the bottom, he was able to make his way forward. 

Arthur's paradoxical stairs lined this maze too, but here they were carved out of rock instead of his usual sleek design. And more importantly, some of them broke off midway and plunged away into nothing. These weren't Arthur's traps: they were his unfinished thoughts. His focus was elsewhere.

Eames knew when he was underneath Arthur's boarded up wreck of a house, and he also had the feeling that he knew what he would find in here. He could see an outline of grey light above now, and he pushed at it, sending dust down into his eyes. It tasted of loss. Maybe this was something Arthur didn't want him to see – he second-guessed coming in here. 

But the door above him gave easily and swung down. Even if Arthur didn't do it consciously, he was inviting him in.

Eames pulled himself up through the door and into a small room. Grey, clouded light filtered in through a cracked window and dust motes floated like tiny sparks in the air. Shapes lurked in each corner: covered up furniture under white sheets. 

A voice drifted from down the hall, female. Accented. Eames knew where this was going, but had no idea where it would end up. Dom's projection of Mal had been deadly. Arthur's one from the funeral parlor had been veiled. Perhaps this time would be different.

As Eames moved closer to the source of the voice, Arthur's joined hers and soon he could make out words.

"Cobb couldn't love you like this," Arthur said. "He turned you into a monster. I can still love you no matter what you are."

"I know that, darling," she said. 

"I could never be afraid of you," Arthur continued. But he sounded a little afraid. "You would never hurt me."

"Of course not," she answered.

Eames felt nervous, however, as if this conversation were layered, and the layers were made up of fear and loss, no matter what Arthur said. He didn't know if it was something he should rescue him from.

He pushed open the door.

Mal was sat in the center of a four-post bed, her dark head bent over Arthur, who was sprawled in her lap. She had one arm under his shoulders and Eames couldn't see her face because she was whispering to Arthur, or kissing him. Or something more intimate and forbidden than either of those things. The fact that he couldn't see what she was doing to him was somehow awful.

The sheets were white, except in the center, surrounding them, where they were red.

Mal lifted her face and Eames's first instinct was to look at Arthur. He was lying still, his eyes open, gazing up at Mal. His shirt was open, too, and his chest was covered in blood. Her fingers had left bloody smears across his cheek.

Eames gasped in a breath and took two steps toward them, then stopped dead when she looked at him.

One side of her face was crushed, the skin peeled away. Her teeth were gone on that side, and her jaw shattered. The other side of her face was unmarked, beautiful, porcelain. Regal.

But the worst of it was her eyes. They were doll-eyes, made of crystal or glass. Sightless and unmoving, yet he knew that she saw him – that Arthur saw him through her. The irises were such pale blue that they were almost white, and they had no pupils. Her eyelids were too wide, revealing too much of the glass orbs beneath them. 

Arthur rested his head on one of her thighs. Her other leg was splayed out behind her, backwards and broken.

"Oh my god," Eames said, aware of how shaken he sounded.

 _I saw her,_ Arthur had whispered to him one night, many months after their post-Fischer reconciliation. Eames had been half-asleep, and in the dark, Arthur had confessed those few details, ones that he didn't necessarily want to hear. _Cobb called me and I knew the hotel so I came rushing down. They hadn't taken her away yet. So I saw her, a little._

"And he's still not afraid of me," Mal said, her blank eyes regarding him, too wide to look anything but predatory. "He knows that I'm gone, that what he saw was just a shell. I could never haunt him, my Arthur. He knows how I would hate it, if his memory of me was a terrible one." Her white eyes filled, and tears ran unchecked down both sides of her face. The pure, unmarked side, and the bloody, gaping side, where they mingled with blood and tissue. 

Eames covered his mouth with his hand, but couldn't look away. She was pathetic and sad, in her horror. It felt unfair.

"I would hate it," she said, her voice hitching with passion, "if he thought I could hurt him on purpose. Any pain I give to him is an accident."

Eames looked back down to Arthur, lying so still against her thigh. At the blood streaming down his chest. Then at her hands, which were covered in blood. Her nails were long and pointed. She ran her fingers across his shoulder and Arthur tensed, arching up, choking back a cry as her nails ripped his skin open.

Mal's voice shook, a whisper. "I wish I didn't hurt you"

"You don't," Arthur told her, his voice a promise. "Nothing hurts, I'm fine."

"I don't mean to," she cried. "I would give anything not to hurt my Arthur, my darling. Please let me stop hurting you, it isn't right."

"Don't cry, don't cry," Arthur said, offering her a bloody smile. "I'm not afraid. You're not scary. You're lovely and you're not hurting me."

She pulled him to her chest fiercely, crushing him against her, holding the back of his head while blood ran up her arm. When she kissed his forehead, she left a bloody mouth-print. When she kissed his neck, her teeth cut him and she murmured apologies in French and English. Arthur's arm dropped to the bed, his hand open and limp. His head fell back against the crook of her arm. 

Eames scrubbed at his face with both hands and pulled himself together. Arthur had made this his business when he'd told him that night what he had seen. He wanted Eames to know. Wanted something from it.

"Hey," Eames said, keeping his voice soft. He took a few slow steps toward the bed, holding his hand out, palm up. "Hey, I'm not afraid either. I knew you too, remember? You would never hurt him. You'd never hurt anyone."

She clutched at Arthur, protective and possessive. Her curls stuck to the blood on his face. 

"You were beautiful," Eames said. "Arthur loved you. _Loves_ you, still. You were like a queen, but so gentle. Arthur was your knight. That's what I always thought." He moved forward slowly, using soft words to cover his footsteps. When he was close enough, he got one knee onto the bed. "Nothing can change what you were," he offered. "Arthur understands that. So you don't have to hold onto him. Yeah?"

Arthur's projection of Mal stared down at Arthur with such infinite tenderness and sadness that it all caught up in the back of Eames's throat. Along with anger, for how Cobb's projection of her had tormented him. Had ruined his memories of her. Anger at the fact that Arthur had seen her, crushed on a sidewalk. But he couldn't let the heat of that anger color the dream. He focused on her sad, glass-jewel eyes. 

"I can hold onto him for a while, Mal," he said. "If you're tired. If you'd like to rest." Slowly, slowly, he slipped his hand into Arthur's cool one, which was still sticky with blood. "Would you like to sleep a while, Mal? Can you let go?" Part of him was keenly aware of the fact that he was addressing Arthur.

"Yes," she said, petting Arthur, lacerating him with every gentle stroke. "I'm so tired. So tired. I want to let go."

"Good. Give him to me, then. It's hard to hold on, isn't it? Exhausting. You can rest. When he needs you, he'll find you again."

She nodded, her breath hitching in her ruined lungs.

Mal closed her glass eyes. She fell, doll-like, back against the bed. As she landed, the sheets swallowed her. The last thing Eames saw of her was the crushed side of her head, her dark curls matted against a broken temporal bone. And then she was gone.

** ** ** **

Arthur felt his breath leave him in a rush as Eames slid an arm under his shoulder and pulled him across his folded legs. Eames still had both legs. He still had both sides of his face, and his skull was intact, his jaw was still on, and his eyes were dark grey, alive, and looking at him.

Eames's fingers were coarse, large, calloused – but gentle, a thief's fingers; they didn't cut him to shreds when he touched. They felt warm, and they made his blood vibrate in his veins, and on the outside of him too, where it ran freely down his ribs.

"It's so hard to hold on," Arthur said. "But I couldn't... at the same time... I have no use for that night. But it's still there." 

Eames kissed him, pressing his mouth to his forehead, cheeks, lips. Eames's mouth tasted like life. It was nice, being with someone real. "Of course it's still there," Eames said. "It can't just go away. And you face things in the dark. That's your nature. You just keep looking at it until you can no longer look away."

Arthur took the hand that was resting on his arm and placed it against his chest. It stung, the contact, and he hissed his breath in through his teeth. Eames tried to pull his hand away, but Arthur pressed it down harder. Everywhere that Eames touched him, for some reason, it made the blood inside of him burn with life. 

"I need it," he said, stripped of shame.

"What do you need?" Eames sounded unsure.

"To keep burning." He dragged Eames's hand down his front, across the fresh lacerations, smearing the blood. "You're not hurting me. It only looks like it hurts. It doesn't. You wouldn't hurt me. You said so once."

"I said I wouldn't hurt you on purpose," Eames clarified.

"Intent is everything." He looked into eyes that were confused and yet strangely focused. Arthur didn't feel focused and that was just fine. "Intent is why you're here," he said. 

Then, all at once, the look of reality fled from Eames's eyes. They went hazy and distant. The focus was replaced by some strange consideration of Arthur. And then, thoughtfully, he leaned down over him and sucked the blood from his throat.

** ** ** **

Eames felt it happen for one brief second―that moment between understanding and chaos--and then it was gone. The dream sucked him in, and Id took over.

Arthur was lying across his legs like a sacrifice to his lust. He was beautifully pale, covered in blood, but relaxed and at peace. Eames vaguely recalled a promise not to hurt him. Vaguely recalled Arthur saying it didn't hurt anyway.

He was groaning as he licked the blood off his neck, deeply satisfied at the feeling of pulsing life under his mouth. He was making a lot of noise and he didn't care. He felt safe, hot, trusted. Arthur made some half-formed noise of encouragement in his ear, his breath strangely cool, and it made Eames shiver. He gripped Arthur's hand and slid his legs out from under him, pressing his hand into the soaked sheets as he moved over him.

"That's it," Arthur said, when Eames curled a hand around his side and licked up the center of his chest. "Yes, that's exactly it."

Everything felt slow, heavy, like he was underwater as he pressed down on Arthur. He felt Arthur's blood seep into his shirt and wick down the arms. Arthur eased his legs apart and used his free hand to pull Eames down harder. His mouth was red, Mal's bloody mouth-print stood out on his forehead like a brand, and when he tilted his head back, a trickle of blood pulsed out of his neck. 

"God, I could die here," Eames said, rubbing his entire body over Arthur's. He licked gently at the cut on his neck, fastened his lips over it briefly before moving down.

"No," Arthur said, his voice rough, his hand gripping the back of Eames's shirt. "No more death." He planted his feet on the bed and pushed up, mindless, just a creature seeking more contact.

Eames felt the stickiness of blood on his hand where he gripped Arthur's ribs. It felt like they were stuck together by it; that if he moved his hand, Arthur's skin would come away with it. 

"Haven't I known you forever," Eames asked, senselessly, not sure exactly what he meant by it. "Haven't I always wanted to have you like this? In every way that is wrong and frightening?" He pressed down with his hips, even through his trousers it felt so good, so close and hot he couldn't bear it. He wanted to scream, cry, or maybe laugh, or kill something, or fuck something proper. He was hungry, he wanted fire, wanted shelter and sought it between the legs that were bracketing his hips.

Arthur was trembling beneath him, so close. He slid his hand up to the back of Eames's head and gripped his hair, pulling his head back to look him in the eye. "If you ever stop, I'll..."

Eames felt the jolt before he saw it happen, knew what it was before it appeared.

On the other side of the bed, a figure sprang up, garish in red and orange. Its face was painted white, with a red, grinning mouth full of teeth and blood. Its empty eyes glared at him, crazed with anger. Its frilly collar was colored with dried human fluids of every nature and it drooled pink as it watched him, smearing its face paint.

Eames leapt up, screaming. Adrenaline surged through him, urging him to wake up, wake up _now_.

Arthur screamed, too, sounding outraged. In a half second of dream-time, he pulled a gun and shot the figure of the clown in the center of its face.

Its brains were cotton candy, and they exploded onto the wall behind it. Slowly, it fell backwards, its one gloved hand flying up as if to grab something. Then it disappeared from view.

Eames's body was still trying to wake up, trembling, still painfully aroused and unfulfilled. 

He hated that fucking clown.

And Arthur was already gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Arthur came awake so violently that he pitched himself out of the bed and landed with a yelp on the hard floor.

"FUCK," was the first thing out of his mouth. His ass hurt from where he landed, his brain hurt from the violent ejection from the dream, and all of his blood was currently residing south of the border. He was tangled in the PASIV line and he scrambled to his feet, trying to undo it.

"What the fuck was that, Eames?" he asked, but Eames was still asleep, groaning into the pillow. 

The door opened and Yusuf came in. He turned on the light and Arthur had to shield his eyes. And shield his crotch, too, lest Yusuf see what kinds of dreams they'd been getting up to. He got into the bed behind Eames again and pulled a sheet up over his hips.

"Arthur!" Yusuf said, his voice urgent, maybe a little afraid. 

He was armed, Arthur soon saw, with a hypodermic.

"I'm all right," Arthur hastened to say, holding both hands up. "I got woken up. I fell out of the bed. I'm okay. Not gonna... you know. It's all right."

Yusuf relaxed a little and closed in on him. Arthur thought, _Oh, shit, not now._

But Yusuf was relentless. He sat next to Arthur on the bed and doctored him diligently. Pulled his eyelid up and shone the penlight, first one eye then the other. Arthur flinched, his eyes watered. Then Yusuf placed his palm against Arthur's forehead. 

"You feel very hot." His eyes were concerned. "You're sweating."

"It was... we were working through some things. It's a little intense down there sometimes."

Yusuf took his wrist, the unbandaged one that was still attached to the PASIV, and searched for his pulse above the cannula. "Your pulse is racing."

"Yeah, well," Arthur said. "It's like I said. I'm, you know. Ready to go back under."

Eames made a noise of distress and gripped the pillow.

"What happened?" Yusuf asked. "Is his experiment working?"

"Umm, it was, I think. There were some issues that maybe, maybe we were... or maybe I was confronting. I wasn't lucid. And then this huge fucking scary clown jumped up."

For a second Yusuf frowned, and then he broke out into laughter. "Oh, quite! Eames and his Frustration Clown. It thwarts him from his desires, you see."

"You know about this?"

"We've discussed it many times. He spent some of his youthful days with a traveling circus."

"That's a true story, the circus thing?"

Yusuf laughed again. It was a strangely merry sound, that of a man discussing something familiar and amusing. "Most of his stories are true, Arthur. Except the mundane ones; those he occasionally makes up. Anyway, at certain times, a terrifying clown will wake him from dreams of fulfillment. Dare I ask what... Oh. Naturally this isn't something we should be discussing. Forgive my intrusion."

"I shot it in the face," Arthur said. 

"Well, good for you. Perhaps he'll get through some of his own issues." Yusuf stood up and went to the door, having decided to leave them to it. Before he closed the door behind him, he turned back. "Don't leave him down there alone for too long," he said. "He's got a few demons himself, ones you could perhaps shoot in the face as well. Do you know what he told me once?"

Arthur shook his head.

"He said, 'Everyone should be so lucky as to have an Arthur.' He respects you."

 _And wants to hump me while drinking my blood,_ Arthur thought, but merely nodded. The subconscious was a strange beast all its own, and waking respect often led to the sleeping desire for comfort. Its most basic form of comfort was sex. He got all that. And he seemed to be more than willing to let it happen, anyway.

"Thanks," was all he said. 

Yusuf closed the door, and Arthur lay back down next to Eames. 

He felt wired, but still tired enough to sleep, and he didn't want to leave Eames down there for too long. He started to get comfortable again, when his cell phone rang from the desk drawer.

"Fuck you," he spat at it. But it was Cobb's ring tone, and Cobb would diligently call him back every half hour, worrying his head off.

He reached over and picked it up. He had to resist the urge to lay his hand over his crotch while waiting. Cobb's voice, however, full of gentle concern, cleared some of the lust from his head.

"Hey, Arthur," he said. "I wanted to see how you were."

"I'm okay." His own voice sounded sleep-rough and tired, and he knew it.

"You kind of sound like shit."

"I'm in England. It's late."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Cobb said. "I didn't know. I'll let... Why England?"

"I, uhh, went for help. With the dream thing."

"About that," Cobb said. 

Arthur bit back a groan of frustration. Eames stirred beside him, arching a little bit, and making another one of those sleepy, needy noises. Arthur stroked a finger along the back of his neck. "What about it?" he asked Cobb.

"I thought about what you said, about not being able to dream normally. Then I remembered when I first met you and... Arthur, how bad is this? You can do it, right? Without the PASIV?"

"I... Well, that's what I'm working on."

"Fuck, I didn't realize. You can't dream normally. You're always lucid. You have been since school."

"Yeah, something like that but we're... Well, I came to see Yusuf to see if he had a compound..."

"Compounds are the worst idea, Arthur. You'll get addicted. You know that."

"Yeah." He threaded his fingers through Eames's hair. He needed to hurry this conversation along. "No, I know that. We went a different direction anyway. It's, well. It's interesting and we're coming up with some things..."

"Because I think I can help you," Cobb said. "Come back to the states and I can go into your dream. We can work it out."

"Well, umm. I'm doing all right, for right now. I'm kind of in the middle of it. It's, you know. It's a start."

"Is Eames there?"

Arthur sat up in the bed, looking around uselessly, through years of paranoia. "How'd you know?"

Cobb was silent for a moment. "Your voice sounds different," he said, finally.

Arthur felt himself flush. "Oh. Yeah. He's got some tricks up his sleeve."

"Well, hopefully he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Maybe he does. He's pretty intuitive. And he seems to... or you seem to... Whatever."

"We don't have to have this conversation," Arthur said, unable to hold back a smirk.

"Right. Be careful, will you? Arthur, I mean it. This is not something you can fuck around with. You know how this kind of madness ends."

 _Mal and her sightless doll eyes, Mal crushed on the sidewalk. 'Please let me stop hurting you.'_ "I know, Cobb."

"Okay. Call me if you need me? For anything. Don't shut me out of this, all right?"

"Yeah, absolutely. I'll call."

"Take care of yourself."

"You too," Arthur said, and ended the call before it could go any further. He thought that maybe he shouldn't have told Cobb about this in the first place, because now it would never leave his mind, not until it was cleared up.

 _Time to get back to it, then,_ Arthur thought, with a glance at Eames, who was practically humping the bed.

"Well it's your fault for having a psycho, cockblocking clown, asshole," he said, not unfondly.

He rolled onto his side, placed his hand on Eames's arm which was easily twice the size of his own, and closed his eyes.

** ** ** **

Eames wandered the hallways for hours, aching, alone, searching. He couldn't remember what he was looking for. Someone had chased him. It wasn't scary, just exciting. Like waiting for something momentous. Every nerve tingled. At one point, he thought someone was breathing down his neck. It sent chills all over him. He heard a repeating voice from the different doors that lined the plain hall. It was a deep voice, dark with something he couldn't place. He searched every room for the person it belonged to, with no results. So far, each room had been empty.

The halls stayed nondescript for a while. Eventually they became school halls, and then university halls, tiled and silent but for the echo of his own footsteps. He started searching for a bathroom, a bedroom, anywhere that he could be alone to deal with this ridiculous desire that he couldn't get rid of. But every room was full of windows.

All at once, another presence filled the hall. He felt it everywhere, some kind of power, something that hijacked reality and split it down the middle. The speaking voice that he searched for faded, and in place of it was the knowledge that the speaker was close.

The halls shifted from being university ones and turned more clinical. Eames looked down to see that his feet were walking along green tiles now. He was wearing shiny, tidy shoes and his dark pants were pressed to perfection. Dark shirt, dark jacket, epaulettes, braided lines, and a midnight blue stable belt around his waist. An old but familiar military cap, emerald grey. Special Forces, Reconnaissance Regiment. 

He stood up straighter in the uniform, adjusted his cap and ran his fingers over the badge on the front of it, and smoothed down his collars. If you fucked around here, you paid the price. He had learned that lesson early on and carried it with him.

He went to the last door in the hall and knocked briskly.

"Enter."

He came into the room, closed the door behind him and saluted, at attention. "Sir. You wanted to see me, sir."

The room was a plain military office, however, it was decorated for the holidays. Lights were strung around the window, holly and ivy hung from the ceiling. There was a tree in the corner. Holiday music filtered in from somewhere in the distance, unintelligible. Garland lined the table.

Yet there was nothing festive about the mood that came off of the officer in waves. Eames knew he was in trouble.

The officer waved him closer. It was no one he recognized, yet still a man he knew. His commanding officer, his boss, teacher, father, an alpha male, everyone and no one.

"There have been reports," the man said. "Reports of misconduct."

A tingling shiver ran through him. It felt delicious, warmed his blood. "Sir, that can't be," he said. And now, only vaguely, he _did_ kind of want to fuck around with authority. To test it, push its limits, break through it. He knew it was wrong and it would go badly. He also knew he was going to let it happen.

Another knock sounded at the door, and the man behind it didn't wait to be invited in.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Arthur said.

Eames turned to look at him. He looked as tidy as ever in a uniform of his own, his hair cut short, every inch of him put-together.

God, Eames wanted to take him apart.

Arthur came to stand behind Eames, at his shoulder.

"At ease," said the officer behind the desk, in an accent somehow both English and American. He shifted in and out of focus. It didn't matter. He was EveryMale.

He felt Arthur shift behind him as he clasped his hands behind his back.

"I wanted to see both of you," the officer said. And it made no sense, because they were in two different regimes – hell, two different countries, and what could they possibly have done together to merit being disciplined by the same officer? It also didn't matter. Once again, trouble had found Eames. At least this time he wasn't alone.

"Reports of bad behavior... Decorum and respect... disciplinary action..."

The man went on and on, his face stern and becoming angry. Eames heard every other word, it seemed like. He felt them, though. Felt the shame, the guilt.

Felt Arthur step closer behind him.

Eames moved his fingers a little, testing to see how close or how far Arthur was to him. His fingers scraped the material of Arthur's trousers. He heard a little hitch of breath when he did that. So he did it again, reaching a little more.

"Unacceptable in this case, gentlemen," the officer went on, and "shame that you have brought on your regime...lack of control, your utter lack of control..."

Arthur pressed closer, literally placing himself in Eames's hand. Eames let his fingers slide lower, to the inseam of Arthur's trousers, where he could feel that he wasn't the only one in the room with a lack of control. 

It felt so forbidden; they were already in trouble and here he was trying to get in deeper. And being _watched._

He curled his fingers, cupping, squeezing. A vocalized breath came from Arthur's lips, and he pressed his hips closer, seeking more contact. 

The officer in front of them got down to some serious yelling, and pulled a gun out of the drawer. Eames kept fondling Arthur behind him, through his trousers, still clasping the wrist of his working hand as if he were at ease. Arthur was quickly losing control; he could hear it and he could feel it.

"Lack of morality..." the officer blustered, loud and dangerous. _Dangerous_ , he was dangerous, they were playing with fire here, could ruin everything. "Necessary actions... shame and guilt for your lack of inhibitions!"

Arthur's hands came to rest on Eames's shoulders, and there was no way to hide what they were doing now. Arthur was breathing hard, panting into his ear and trying to get his tongue under Eames's collar. His hips worked against his hand; Eames hardly had to do any of the work.

"You're going to get us into bigger trouble," Arthur said. He didn't sound upset. He sounded exultant, full of awe. "We're so _caught_." His voice broke on the last word, as if saying it made it true.

The officer stopped yelling and just stared at the two of them, his eyes focused and deadly. Arthur, however, could not seem to stop what was already happening.

"Oh god, fuck," he panted, collapsing against Eames's back with his head on his shoulder, his breath and shaky hot on his collar. 

Eames pulled his hand away and tried to be inconspicuous about wiping it on the back of his coat but their commanding officer just stood there, staring into his eyes, boring shame into him. Eames felt his defenses coming down, and thought maybe he should beg for mercy. He didn't know who to ask it of, though: the man in front of him, or the man behind him.

Arthur's right hand snaked around Eames's waist, toying with the sable belt. He slid his fingers along the metal buckle, and, okay, so this was happening right in front of the officer's eyes; there was no way he could miss it now. Unless Eames could keep the man's attention focused on his face, so that he wouldn't look down.

If the man looked down, he would see Arthur's fingers creeping slowly lower, slipping under the waistband, into his trousers, seeking. Not a thief's fingers, but those of a killer: quick, sure and determined.

"Sir," Eames said, his mouth gone dry. "We, we, we're willing to try, to, to make amends for our, mmm..." He knew his eyes were about to roll back in his head; he could feel himself starting to lean back into Arthur, and holy shit, if they hadn't gotten caught the first time, they definitely would now. When he'd jerked Arthur off it had been behind his back. This – there was nowhere to hide.

"What are you _doing,_ soldier," the officer asked, his accent now strangely American. He reached out with a huge, calloused, heavy hand and gripped Eames's jaw so hard that it hurt. He gasped, but couldn't pull away.

Arthur's left hand moved like a striking snake. He whipped Eames's gun from the holster at his side and stuck it into the officer's face. 

"Take your hands off him," Arthur hissed, training the gun lower, to the officer's chest, "or I'll deck the halls with your fucking innards."

Eames made a strangled noise of lust in the back of his throat, because it wasn't just Arthur's hand now: it was his ice, his speed, his ferocity and, most of all, the possessive edge in his voice. 

The officer backed away, frightened, terrified of Arthur and of his sudden rage. And it was this: the fact that Arthur could chase away his inhibitions and make him behave like this in front of his superiors. Could make him fall apart in the face of authority. He gave himself up in Arthur's hands, in the arms circling his waist, one hand still fondling him through it and the other steady with the gun.

"Arthur, Arthur," was all he could say, the last syllable choked off in a moan.

"So fucking messy," Arthur said. He re-holstered the gun, and then ran his hand down Eames's hip, smoothing imaginary wrinkles.

The EveryMale was gone. The office was also gone. Eames felt dazed, flushed and warm. Languid. He almost fell when Arthur moved from behind him.

"I need to pee," Arthur said, matter-of-factly. "There has to be a bathroom."

They stood in the center of a busy mall on Christmas day. Eames became aware that his trousers were undone and he hastened to zip and button them back up. He was now wearing old jeans and a plain t shirt. Over it, a torn jacket. They looked familiar. They looked like clothes he had once seen Arthur wearing.

He turned to look behind him, and there stood Arthur in brown trousers and a patterned shirt. His hair fell in loose waves, soft around his face. Eames thought of those shiny black birds, grackles maybe. Then a flock of them took flight behind Arthur, and crashed through a glass ceiling.

Arthur didn't seem to mind. "We can finish shopping later," he said. "Let's find a bathroom."

"Right," Eames answered. 

The quest became all-consuming. They dodged shoppers, some of whom were robots, some of whom were zombies. One was a clown, shuffling by. Eames skirted that one with a wide berth. They searched, single-minded, until Arthur found a room marked with the "Gentlemen" sign. 

He went into it, and then came out a second later, saying, "I can't use that one, it's dirty."

They kept walking. Elves accosted them, a vendor tried to sell Star Wars figurines, and another vendor tried to sell Princess Leia herself. Eventually they came to another bathroom. Eames followed Arthur in this time.

The floor was strewn with hypodermic needles.

"They'll go right through my shoes," Arthur said. " _Fuck._ "

They searched on. The next urinal was completely out in the open and surrounded by a wall of people, watching it. Arthur swore at it. The next toilet was flooding filthy water. They left the mall and walked outside, where they found a urinal on the edge of a cliff.

"Goddamnit," Arthur said, "I really have to go."

"Then go," Eames said, finally understanding, and pushed him off the cliff.


	5. Chapter 5

Arthur woke with a full-body, hypnic jerk. He had to pee like a racehorse, and his pants were sticky and ruined. 

"Christ," he said, dragging the back of his hand across his face.

He pulled the cannula free from his wrist and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Eames was still asleep beside him. Arthur was done sleeping, for now. The dream was over; he felt awake, but the dream clung to him like a scent. Vaguely, he remembered the shopping mall one. But the military one was stronger. The feeling of it remained: the original guilt he had felt at being caught and then watched. The thrill of deciding he didn't care. The warmth of not being alone in his disregard for authority. The danger. And the weird, possessive feeling that had taken him over when Eames was threatened, touched, grabbed by someone else. He could never feel like that awake, not like he had in the dream. Not with that ache to protect what was his. And certainly not with the feeling that Eames belonged to him in the first place.

It was good to dream like that. He hadn't, for as long as he could remember touched those parts of his mind. They felt a little achy and raw, overexposed to sudden intrusion. Brain-chemicals surged through him in the aftermath, but, clinically, he knew them for what they were.

For now, it was done. Gently, Arthur reached across Eames and pulled the cannula free of his wrist, too. This way, Eames wouldn't spend the rest of the dream looking for him. Now he could finish up on his own, in private.

Arthur grabbed some fresh clothes from his suitcase and made his way into the bathroom.

It didn't take more than fifteen minutes before Eames was at the door of the shower.

** ** **

Eames came awake slowly. Arthur was gone, and he could hear the water running down the hall, from those communal showers. Before Yusuf could get in here (and the man was tactful, he had to give him that, too,) he stripped the sheets from the bed and dumped them in the laundry bin in the hall. He would have to wash his clothes, so he went into one of the utility rooms and found some scrubs that Yusuf kept around for when he was working in the lab. 

He went into the shower room, where the stalls were separated by green-tiled walls and flimsy curtains. When he closed the door behind him, Arthur poked his head out from behind one of the curtains, frowning suspiciously.

"Oh," he said when he saw that it was Eames, and ducked back into the shower.

Eames stripped off his clothes. He was covered in sweat, and the billowing steam from the shower blew a draft in his direction, chilling him.

"All right there, Arthur?" he asked, his voice light and casual.

"Yeah," Arthur answered. "You?"

"Just fine. A little woozy but that will wear off." He stood looking at the showers, thinking for a moment. Arthur was behind the closed curtain, and Eames, by habit, didn't initiate contact. Arthur always touched first; it was a known rule as old as their relationship, if you could call it that. Probably as old as all of Arthur's relationships. Mal had always touched him without permission, and she seemed to be the only one who didn't make him scowl when she did it.

Eames went into the shower stall next to Arthur's and turned on the water.

After about ten seconds, Arthur poked his head out again, this time pulling Eames's curtain aside. He was scowling anyway, gloriously annoyed.

"What?" Eames said.

In reply, Arthur reached around the tile wall and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him into his stall. It was a damn good thing that he wasn't as prickly as Arthur.

Arthur looked him over critically, even going so far as to checking his eyes, the way Yusuf did after a chemical experiment.

"I'm fine," Eames said, suddenly feeling unbalanced and shy. "It was mild."

"Yeah, well, you did it for me, so. Thanks for that." He tossed a bottle of body wash to Eames.

"So," Eames said, trying not to feel awkward as he soaped himself up, starting with his hair. "Do you think it was helpful?"

"I think so. I mean, it worked, right? I dreamed the kinds of things that I never did. Not since, you know." 

Eames didn't know, at least not the details. He might never.

"It feels weird," Arthur went on. "I mean, unreal. I can't imagine not being able to tell those dreams from reality while I'm awake. Why would I even need a totem after dreams like that? It's so easy to tell the difference."

"But when you get used to dreaming without lucidity, those dreams can also become mundane in some cases, and because we dream so often, it's still a good idea to use the totem."

"Do you use yours after your non-lucid dreams?"

"Well, no," Eames answered. "I just use mine when I've been working a lot. But I can forge, so it's easy to tell when I'm awake. I can't change myself, can't call certain things into existence."

"I need to start over," Arthur said, his voice quiet.

"What do you mean?"

Arthur turned to him, naked not only literally. "With dreaming. With work. Everything. I've been lucid for so long, and now that I see where that got me―losing my mind when I'm awake―I have to re-train in dreaming. I _have_ to, if I want to keep working. It has to be an on and off kind of thing. Lucid and then normal, back and forth, until I can do both easily and at will. How do you do it?"

"It's just the way I've always been," Eames said. "You were trained to be lucid when you were too young. It helped, so that you could escape the nightmares. You probably need to let them back in and keep working through them. Can you afford the time off?"

Arthur smiled. "I can afford anything I want, if you're talking about money. It's just. I love it. The work. You know?"

Eames wanted to reach for him, to touch his wet hair. Instead he smiled, an invitation. "Dreaming will still be there when you go back," he said. "It's not going anywhere. Neither is your skill. I promise you."

"What if I can't get work? If I leave for a while and then no one will hire me?"

"Arthur, really. You've never stopped working. Lying low for a while isn't going to destroy you. And you can do point work without going under, at least for a while. Have you considered it? And I always need a good point man anyway. Believe me, I'd be thrilled if I had you running some of my more complicated heists, especially in England where people already know of me."

"You're looking for help?"

"I'm always in need of the best," Eames said. "And I need someone to protect me topside in some cases, do the physical work, awake."

Arthur turned away and went back under the stream of water, considering this. "I could do that," he said. 

"If you're going to stay in England for a while..." Eames said.

Arthur turned back around, with a close-lipped smile as he wiped a patch of suds from Eames's neck. Then his hand traveled around to the front of his throat, tracing a scar. It was the newest in Eames's collection of them and still felt sensitive. Arthur seemed to realize this and pulled his hand away.

"Yeah, I could protect you," Arthur said.

In turn, Eames reached for the scar that ran horizontally across Arthur's shoulder. "Knife wound," he said. Then he touched a deeper scar on his other shoulder. "Bullet."

Smirking, Arthur reached towards Eames's face and touched the small scar that split his eyebrow. "Diamond ring," he said. "I probably know them all. I think." He ran his hand down Eames's side, to a jagged one right beneath the last rib. "Broken bottle." Lower, down to his left hip. "Shrapnel." Arthur got on his knees and touched the long stretch of lines on the outside of his thigh. "Road burn from the motorcycle spill when you were twenty." He wrapped his hand around the opposite ankle. "Dog bite, breaking and entering." He looked up, considering Eames for a moment, and then stood abruptly. 

Eames turned Arthur around; Arthur went willingly, with a small chuckle. Eames touched the scar on his shoulder-blade. "Another bullet; this one was close." He turned Arthur to face him again and took his wrists in hand. Thin lines marked them – to any other eye it might look like a suicide attempt, but Eames knew better. "Zip-tie from abduction; you could have lost your hands." Arthur shrugged as if this didn't matter. Eames reached toward his face and ran his fingers along the thin line on his forehead, that slanted down from his hairline. "Bashed yourself on a fire escape, acting like a daredevil." This time, he went down on one knee, and took Arthur's leg in both hands. He gently gripped him at the knee, looking at three precise, circular scars. "Surgery," he said. "Torn meniscus."

Arthur clucked his tongue in annoyance and pulled his leg away. "I hate those."

"Not ill-gotten enough for you?" Eames asked, smiling. "This one, then." He ran his hand up the long length of Arthur's inner thigh. This scar was jagged. "Chain-link fence as you tried to get over it. Of all your scars, this one bled the most." And suddenly he was back in the dream, pressing Arthur onto the bed and licking blood from him. In the light of the showers, in reality, the thought of it made his stomach jump unpleasantly. It was always harder to look at dreams like that in the light. 

He patted the inside of Arthur's thigh companionably and stood up again.

"You missed one," Arthur said.

"Did I?"

With a smile that was almost shy, Arthur ran his tongue over his own lip, and pulled the bottom one away from his teeth. Sure enough, there was a tiny scar on the inside of his lip. And Eames remembered: Arthur bleeding from the mouth, laughing, smearing the blood with the back of his hand as he got up off the mat.

"I did that," Eames said. "Our first sparring match. I didn't know it scarred. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You have a hell of a straight punch."

"You were supposed to weave."

"I was looking at you," Arthur said. "I got distrac--"

Eames cut him off with a sudden kiss, sliding his hand around the back of Arthur's neck and jerking him forward. Before Arthur could pull away, he kept on with a few shallow kisses, until Arthur decided to join in and gripped Eames's arm in his strong fingers.

"Distracted," Arthur said, when Eames allowed him to speak.

"Arthur," Eames said, pressing their foreheads together, "stay in England for a while. Stay at my flat. We can finish this dream thing together. I can help you, let me finish the job. It's no good, you staying at the clinic. Nothing that Yusuf can cook up in his lab will be able to accomplish what we did tonight."

Arthur thought it over for a minute, taking his time. "If I can still work," he said, finally. "I mean right away. I don't want to take any time off. And I don't just mean sitting at the computer. I'll go crazy. Crazi _er_."

"You're not crazy," Eames said. "You're just having a moment, is all. We all have them, Arthur. Allow yourself, all right? And anyway, between jobs we can dream-share and see where it goes. You can practice both, lucid and non-lucid. Until you're doing it on your own. Yeah? What have you got back home in the states? Any jobs lined up?"

"No, no jobs. I didn't take any, after I started seeing fish in my stairwell and fire falling from the sky."

The idea of Arthur losing control chilled him, but he smiled anyway and ran his thumbs along the angle of his cheekbones. "It was that bad?"

"It was worse," Arthur said, pulling away, finally having had enough of the intimacy for the moment. It was always a countdown with him. "By the time I got here I didn't know what was real anymore. I was awake all the way here, but still dreaming. I have no idea what I was saying to people, probably some seriously fucked up nonsense. I'm lucky I didn't end up in jail."

"Jesus," Eames said, stepping off and allowing him space. "I'm sorry."

"It's better now," Arthur said. "I'm freezing. Aren't you?"

"We should get out, I guess."

But instead of turning the water off, Arthur reached for him, took him by the arms, and pushed him against the wet tiles.

"Oh," Eames said, unable to find any other words. 

And then Arthur was kissing him, pressed against him full-length, his hand sliding lower.

"Good heavens, Arthur," Eames said, as his hand joined Arthur's, gripping around them both. He thought of a thousand more clever things to say, then he reminded himself that he always talked too much when Arthur got quiet, so he closed his mouth and let Arthur continue.

Arthur watched him, his dark eyes almost holding a challenge, nearly arrogant in his power. He smirked, which just about parted his lips. Anybody else, and Eames would want to punch that self-satisfied look off his face. But on Arthur, the look almost made him stop breathing. He gave himself up to Arthur's control, and sort of reveled in Arthur's trust of him. He knew the weight of it. It didn't come cheap and had taken him years to earn.

Arthur touched him with practiced ease, and the same confidence that he gave to everything he performed. It hadn't always been so easy.

Eames put his arms around Arthur's waist and drew him close, knocking the breath out of him. Arthur dropped his head to Eames's shoulder. He could still feel the smirk on his lips.

"We could get caught," Arthur said into his ear, before fastening his teeth to his neck.

Everything in Eames's body tensed at the words; coiled tight in his stomach. Any of the other people staying here could walk in at any moment. He thought of the dream, when they were both military boys, doing this in front of their superior.

"Someone could see," Arthur whispered. His hand moved faster. "We could be in trouble."

"Oh, god," Eames said, choked off at the end. That was all it took, the idea of it. That this was still forbidden, that someone could easily see him with his back pressed against the tiles as Arthur touched him. That maybe that someone would watch while it happened, could see what Arthur did to him. A kink that he never even knew he had.

"We have to be quiet... ah..." Arthur gasped into his shoulder and tensed against him, pressing him back into the tiles. 

Apparently, a kink that Arthur hadn't known he'd had, either. 

It was interesting, that they could still find surprises about each other after working together for ten years or so. He'd never be bored, at least. He kind of liked the idea, when he thought about it.

** ** ** **

Low music drifted in from the kitchen, from Yusuf's iPod. "Moonlight Serenade," Eames thought it was. Yusuf himself was coming down the stairs, drying his hands, when Eames came into the kitchen wearing scrubs. Grey, mid-morning light filtered in through the window above the sink.

"Good morning," Yusuf said. "Where's Arthur?"

"Getting changed. He's all right."

Yusuf glanced down at Eames's scrubs.

"I borrowed these, hope that's okay. My clothes got all sweaty. Hope you don't mind if I used your washer."

Yusuf must have known what really happened to his clothes, but he didn't say anything, god love him. He just nodded and put the kettle on.

"So, speaking of Arthur," Eames began. "I think it went fairly well, so..."

"Yes, speaking of Arthur," Yusuf said, his voice hushed, "you must know that the next few weeks... or likely months... are not going to be easy. I debate whether he should go back to work so soon. I debate whether he should be alone."

"Oh, we kind of already talked about that," Eames said, rubbing the back of his head. "He'll stay with me for a while, I think. I'm not far from you, in case we should need you. And he'll work topside for a while. You know he can't not work. Then he'll really lose it."

Yusuf got three cups down from the cupboard and set them around the table. "Earl Grey?"

"Yes, please. For Arthur, too."

And if Yusuf had his own thoughts about Eames knowing what tea Arthur preferred in the morning, he kept those to himself, too. "You should expect him to cycle through everything he cut himself off from in the past. You know that, right?"

"Nightmares?"

"Nightmares, anxiety, what-have-you. I don't know exactly what happened to him. I don't need to. But it was enough to make him lock it away. An extractor like Mr. Cobb could probably draw it out of him, but that also would not be natural." Yusuf smiled. "Sometimes it's simply more effective to be a human before being a dreamwalker."

"That's why you don't do it often?" Eames asked. "Not because of the compounds?"

"Precisely."

"Do what often?" Arthur asked, coming into the kitchen. He wore a pair of old, faded jeans and a flannel, button-down shirt. His hair was wet and beginning to dry into curls. 

"Go under," Yusuf said."I try not to live like that. And now you see why. Sit." He indicated a free chair for Arthur, and when the kettle whistled, he poured tea.

"Thank you," Arthur said.

"I'm afraid all I have is cereal and scones to go with tea," Yusuf said. "Not much for cooking."

"Anything's fine," Arthur said.

"Eames has been telling me you're going to stay with him for a while."

"Yeah, I guess so," Arthur said.

"I think it's a fine idea. I can't think of a better place for you to be, actually. Being here isn't going to help you, and I've got other people who need far more care than you. I don't mean that you're not worthy of my time, but you're self-sufficient where these others are not, and I have less worries about you."

"That's heartening," Arthur said.

Eames was amused, and pleased that Yusuf had figured Arthur out enough to say the exact correct thing." _You're not helpless. You're strong enough for this._

"I want you off compounds for a month, Arthur. Use the PASIV if you're just using it to dreamwalk with Eames―but don't get hooked on that, either. Dream alone some of the time. _Sleep_ alone. Write down what you dream and how it made you feel."

"I feel like I'm in DreamTech again," Arthur said, before taking a sip of tea. 

"Indeed," Yusuf said, "what did you do in DreamTech when you were asked to journal your dreams, if you were lucid throughout all your dream classes?"

"I made shit up."

"Don't, this time. Keep track of the real ones. Toss and turn in the night. Wake up without a kick or a countdown. Wake up crying in the middle of the night. Like a normal person."

"None of that appeals to me," Arthur said drily. He held up a hand before Yusuf or Eames could disapprove. "But, it appeals to me more than asking strangers on the tube if they can see the blood coming up through the floor. I'll do it, all right?"

"Christ, Arthur," Eames said. He could just about picture it: Arthur, the madman on the train, his eyes wild and lost, babbling about his hallucinations. It hurt his mind to think about it.

"It's done," Arthur said. 

"It's not," Yusuf warned. "That's why you shouldn't be alone. And no caffeine, either. No sleep aids. No NyQuil. Nothing that will alter your mental state. If it says not to operate heavy machinery, don't take it."

"I don't like pills anyway," Arthur said.

"Then I release you to your own care," Yusuf said. "And I'm here if you need me."

"I owe you," Arthur said. He turned to Eames. "Both of you. I'll make it up to you."

"You can pay me," Yusuf said, casual but serious. "Or you can do some work for me when you're sorted out."

"I'd be glad to," Arthur said.

"You'll already doing my hard work," Eames said. "So you don't owe me after those jobs are done. We're square."

Arthur finished his breakfast in silence, thinking it over.

** ** ** **

"You steal this?" Arthur asked, getting into Eames's car after shoving his suitcase and the PASIV into the back.

"Don't assume," Eames said, keying the ignition. "I do buy things on occasion."

Arthur looked over at him and tried to read his expression. Eames was smirking, trying to remain mysterious, his eyes fixed ahead. He didn't care if Eames had stolen the car or not. He just liked watching his profile as he decided whether to tell the truth or let Arthur guess. Eames was unreadable, it was part of his job description. But he let Arthur read him on a regular basis.

Arthur had never noticed that before.

"You did steal it," Arthur said.

Eames pulled away from the curb, and a sleek, black hearse pulled out in front of the car.

"Watch out for the..." Arthur began, breathless. He bit back the words and shook his head. The hearse wasn't there. He checked for Eames's reaction. "Sorry."

Eames didn't look flustered in the least. "That's to be expected, we're not in the clear yet. It takes some time. Yeah? What was it?"

"A hearse."

"Ah. Better than a fish, I suppose."

"Yeah."

Eames kept his eyes on the road. Arthur stared openly at him. At his close-cropped hair, dark from months in England. The scar on his eyebrow, the elegant slope of his nose. The curve of his mouth. Without realizing he was doing it, Arthur put his fingers to his own lips, as if trying to remember the pressure of Eames's lips against his. Then he dropped his hand into his lap. These forays into his subconscious urges during waking hours were going to have to stop. He felt like a walking dream, all his thoughts and feelings on display. And they weren't even hooked up.

Eames was probably the single most dishonest person Arthur had ever met. He lied for a living. For all of his livings, really. He cheated at cards, stole money, information, cars, nabbed secrets and sold them to the highest bidder. He lied to people's minds, in their dreams. Became other identities, awake and sleeping.

"You're thinking," Eames said, with a glance toward him. "I can practically hear you."

It gave Arthur a quick jolt, as if Eames could really read his mind while they were awake. Impossible, though.

"Yeah, I'm thinking," Arthur said.

"'Bout what?"

_About who you are, about your mouth, and your strange, focused eyes, about what you do, and how you do it, about how you lie your way through life. About how you would probably not lie to me. Or maybe you really can't anymore. About the things you hide and the ones you can't hide. About how you stole my phone and forged my passport when we first met, about the first time we fucked in Germany, about how you got Cobb out of the country and how you saved the Fischer case._

_About how you showed up yesterday and took me under without any hesitation._

_About how I'm supposed to get through this, and all I have to accomplish that is you._

"About when I was a kid," Arthur finally said. "I told some of it to Mal, some to Dom. Never really the whole thing though."

Eames kept his eyes on the road, but there was a flicker of something in them. Interest, surprise, warmth or some combination of them. He didn't urge Arthur to go on.

"When I was in school, I got involved in a situation. It cost me. A lot. It cost a lot of kids their lives."

Eames listened, nodding. He didn't offer any comment.

"I lost someone that I tried to help," Arthur said. "That was how it started."

 

** ** ** ** 

 

END.


End file.
